o feel, a touch, as of a light
finger, on his cheek. He was in Hanover street. Before him was the
house--the oyster-room staring at him through the lighted transparencies
of its two windows, like two square eyes, below; and his tenant's light
in a chamber above! The added shock which this discovery gave to the
heaving of his heart, made him gasp for breath. Could it be? Did he
still dream? While he stood panting and staring at the building, the
city clocks began to strike. Eleven o'clock; it was ten when he came
away; how he must have driven! His thoughts caught up the word.
Driven--by what? Driven from his house in horror, through street and
lane, over half the city--driven--hunted in terror, and smitten by a
shock here! Driven--driven! He could not rid his mind of the word, nor
of the meaning it suggested. The pavements about him began to ring and
echo with the tramp of many feet, and the cold, brittle air was shivered
with the noisy voices that had roared and bawled applause and laughter
at the National Theatre all the evening, and were now singing and
howling homeward. Groups of rude men, and ruder boys, their breaths
steaming in the icy air, began to tramp by, jostling him as they passed,
till he was forced to draw back to the wall, and give them the sidewalk.
Dazed and giddy, in cold fear, and with the returning sense of something
near him, he stood and watched the groups that pushed and tumbled in
through the entrance of the oyster-room, whistling and chattering as
they went, and banging the door behind them. He noticed that some came
out presently, banging the door harder, and went, smoking and shouting,
down the street. Still they poured in and out, while the street was
startled with their stimulated riot, and the bar-room within echoed
their trampling feet and hoarse voices. Then, as his glance wandered
upward to his tenant's window, he thought of the sick child, mixing this
hideous discord in the dreams of fever. The word brought up the name and
the thought of his dead friend. "In the name of the Saviour, I charge
you be true and tender to mankind!" The memory of these words seemed to
ring clearly, as if a voice had spoken them, above the roar that
suddenly rose in his mind. In that moment he felt himself a wretched and
most guilty man. He felt that his cruel words had entered that humble
home, to make desperate poverty more desperate, to sicken sickness, and
to sadden sorrow. Before him was the dram-shop, let