down in a hansom cab and done something about as plain as butter and
about as useful and nasty. He has gone down to South Kensington,
Brompton, and Fulham, and by spending about four thousand pounds of
his private means, has raised an army of nearly as many men; that is
to say, an army big enough to beat, not only Wayne, but Wayne and all
his present enemies put together. The army, I understand, is encamped
along High Street, Kensington, and fills it from the Church to Addison
Road Bridge. It is to advance by ten different roads uphill to the
north.

"I cannot endure to remain here. Everything makes it worse than it
need be. The dawn, for instance, has broken round Campden Hill;
splendid spaces of silver, edged with gold, are torn out of the sky.
Worse still, Wayne and his men feel the dawn; their faces, though
bloody and pale, are strangely hopeful ... insupportably pathetic.
Worst of all, for the moment they are winning. If it were not for Buck
and the new army they might just, and only just, win.

"I repeat, I cannot stand it. It is like watching that wonderful play
of old Maeterlinck's (you know my partiality for the healthy, jolly
old authors of the nineteenth century), in which one has to watch the
quiet conduct of people inside a parlour, while knowing that the very
men are outside the door whose word can blast it all with tragedy. And
this is worse, for the men are not talking, but writhing and bleeding
and dropping dead for a thing that is already settled--and settled
against them. The great grey masses of men still toil and tug and
sway hither and thither around the great grey tower; and the tower is
still motionless, as it will always be motionless. These men will be
crushed before the sun is set; and new men will arise and be crushed,
and new wrongs done, and tyranny will always rise again like the sun,
and injustice will always be as fresh as the flowers of spring. And
the stone tower will always look down on it. Matter, in its brutal
beauty, will always look down on those who are mad enough to consent
to die, and yet more mad, since they consent to live."

* * * * *

Thus ended abruptly the first and last contribution of the Special
Correspondent of the _Court Journal_ to that valued periodical.

The Correspondent himself, as has been said, was simply sick and
gloomy at the last news of the triumph of Buck. He slouched sadly down
the steep Aubrey Road, up which he had