fine frosty weather. The Whitechapel Road
swarmed, with noisy life, as though it were a Saturday night. The stars
flared in the sky like the lights of celestial costermongers. Everybody
was on the alert for the advent of Mr. Gladstone. He must surely come
through the Road on his journey from the West Bow-wards. But nobody saw
him or his carriage, except those about the Hall. Probably he went by
tram most of the way. He would have caught cold in an open carriage, or
bobbing his head out of the window of a closed.

"If he had only been a German prince, or a cannibal king," said Crowl
bitterly, as he plodded toward the Club, "we should have disguised Mile
End in bunting and blue fire. But perhaps it's a compliment. He knows
his London, and it's no use trying to hide the facts from him. They must
have queer notions of cities, those monarchs. They must fancy everybody
lives in a flutter of flags and walks about under triumphal arches, like
as if I were to stitch shoes in my Sunday clothes." By a defiance of
chronology Crowl had them on to-day, and they seemed to accentuate the
simile.

"And why shouldn't life be fuller of the Beautiful," said Denzil. The
poet had brushed the reluctant mud off his garments to the extent it was
willing to go, and had washed his face, but his eyes were still
bloodshot from the cultivation of the Beautiful. Denzil was accompanying
Crowl to the door of the Club out of good-fellowship. Denzil was himself
accompanied by Grodman, though less obtrusively. Least obtrusively was
he accompanied by his usual Scotland Yard shadows, Wimp's agents. There
was a surging nondescript crowd about the Club, and the police, and the
door-keeper, and the stewards could with difficulty keep out the tide of
the ticketless, through which the current of the privileged had equal
difficulty in permeating. The streets all around were thronged with
people longing for a glimpse of Gladstone. Mortlake drove up in a hansom
(his head a self-conscious pendulum of popularity, swaying and bowing to
right and left) and received all the pent-up enthusiasm.

"Well, good-by, Cantercot," said Crowl.

"No, I'll see you to the door, Peter."

They fought their way shoulder to shoulder.

Now that Grodman had found Denzil he was not going to lose him again. He
had only found him by accident, for he was himself bound to the
unveiling ceremony, to which he had been invited in view of his known
devotion to the task of unveiling the Myst