weeds, his light spats, his spotted neckcloth, and
his Aquascutum.

Not that I dared look at him much. What I had learned made me eager to
search his face, but I did not dare show any increased interest. I had
always been a little off-hand with him, for I had never much liked him,
so I had to keep on the same manner. He was as merry as a grig, full of
chat and very friendly and amusing. I remember he picked up the book I
had brought off that morning to read in the train--the second volume of
Hazlitt's _Essays_, the last of my English classics--and discoursed so
wisely about books that I wished I had spent more time in his company
at Biggleswick.

'Hazlitt was the academic Radical of his day,' he said. 'He is always
lashing himself into a state of theoretical fury over abuses he has
never encountered in person. Men who are up against the real thing save
their breath for action.'

That gave me my cue to tell him about my journey to the North. I said I
had learned a lot in Biggleswick, but I wanted to see industrial life
at close quarters. 'Otherwise I might become like Hazlitt,' I said.

He was very interested and encouraging. 'That's the right way to set
about it,' he said. 'Where were you thinking of going?'

I told him that I had half thought of Barrow, but decided to try
Glasgow, since the Clyde seemed to be a warm corner.

'Right,' he said. 'I only wish I was coming with you. It'll take you a
little while to understand the language. You'll find a good deal of
senseless bellicosity among the workmen, for they've got parrot-cries
about the war as they used to have parrot-cries about their labour
politics. But there's plenty of shrewd brains and sound hearts too. You
must write and tell me your conclusions.'

It was a warm evening and he dozed the last part of the journey. I
looked at him and wished I could see into the mind at the back of that
mask-like face. I counted for nothing in his eyes, not even enough for
him to want to make me a tool, and I was setting out to try to make a
tool of him. It sounded a forlorn enterprise. And all the while I was
puzzled with a persistent sense of recognition. I told myself it was
idiocy, for a man with a face like that must have hints of resemblance
to a thousand people. But the idea kept nagging at me till we reached
our destination.

As we emerged from the station into the golden evening I saw Mary
Lamington again. She was with one of the Weekes girls, and after the
Bi