some would have tarried and aided: for there is,
after all, as much kindness as cruelty in our nature; perhaps they
thought it was only some intoxicated and maudlin idler; or, perhaps, in
the heat of their pursuit, they thought not at all.

So they rolled on, and their voices died away, and their steps were
hushed, and Glendower, insensible and cold as the iron he clung to, was
once more alone. Slowly he revived; he opened his dim and glazing eyes,
and saw the evening star break from its chamber, and, though sullied by
the thick and foggy air, scatter its holy smiles upon the polluted city.

He looked quietly on the still night, and its first watcher among the
hosts of heaven, and felt something of balm sink into his soul; not,
indeed, that vague and delicious calm which, in his boyhood of poesy and
romance, he had drunk in, by green solitudes, from the mellow twilight:
but a quiet, sad and sober, circling gradually over his mind, and
bringing it back from its confused and disordered visions and darkness
to the recollection and reality of his bitter life.

By degrees the scene he had so imperfectly witnessed, the fight of
the robber and the eager pursuit of the mob, grew over him: a dark and
guilty thought burst upon his mind.

"I am a man like that criminal," said he, fiercely. "I have nerves,
sinews, muscles, flesh; I feel hunger, thirst, pain, as acutely: why
should I endure more than he can? Perhaps he had a wife, a child, and
he saw them starving inch by inch, and he felt that he ought to be their
protector; and so he sinned. And I--I--can I not sin too for mine? can I
not dare what the wild beast, and the vulture, and the fierce hearts of
my brethren dare for their mates and young? One gripe from this hand,
one cry from this voice, and my board might be heaped with plenty, and
my child fed, and she smile as she was wont to smile,--for one night at
least."

And as these thoughts broke upon him, Glendower rose, and with a step
firm, even in weakness, he strode unconsciously onward.

A figure appeared; Glendower's heart beat thick. He slouched his hat
over his brows, and for one moment wrestled with his pride and his stern
virtue: the virtue conquered, but not the pride; the virtue forbade him
to be the robber; the pride submitted to be the suppliant. He sprang
forward, extended his hands towards the stranger, and cried in a sharp
voice, the agony of which rang through the long dull street with a
sudden and ec