gh the dingy lamplight seemed to
merge them into a mournful kinship.

He spoke rapidly, and for the most part the long, involved sentences
rolled themselves without meaning. But now and then something
struggled clear--a familiar phrase--an ironical echo. Then Robert
Stonehouse saw through the disfigurement to the man that had been--the
poor maimed and shackled fighter gibing and leering at his
fellow-prisoners.

"And now, my delightful and learned young friends----"

And yet he had stood up for little Robert Stonehouse in those days--had
armed him, and opened doors, and made himself into a stepping-stone to
the freedom he had never known. And had gone under. . . .

"That is all for tonight, men and women. I thank you for your support.
You may rest assured that the fight will go on. The end is in sight,
and if need be I shall lead the last attack in person."

Then he stepped down from his soap-box and swung it on to his shoulders
by means of a cord, and went limping off in a strange and anxious haste.

Stonehouse pushed roughly through the dispersing, purposeless crowd and
caught up with him as he was about to lose himself in a dark network of
little squalid streets. He felt oddly young and diffident, for the
schoolmaster is always the schoolmaster though he be mad and broken.

"Mr. Ricardo--don't you remember me?"

The old man stopped and blinked up uncertainly from under the sodden
brim of his hat. His dirty claw-like hands clutched his coat together
in an instinctive gesture of concealment. He seemed disturbed and even
rather offended at the interruption.

"I--ah--I beg your pardon. No, I'm afraid not. It is--ah--not
unnatural. You understand--I have too many supporters."

"Yes--yes--of course. But you knew me years ago when I was a boy.
Don't you remember Robert Stonehouse?"

It was evident that the name fanned some faint memory which flickered
up for a moment and then went out.

"You will excuse me. It is possible. I have heard the name. But I
have long since ceased to concern myself with persons. In a great
struggle such as this individuals are submerged."

He walked on again, slip-slopping in his shapeless boots through the
slush, his head down to the rain.

"Christine," Robert said, "don't you remember Christine?"

(He himself had not thought of her for years, and now deliberately he
had conjured her up.)

Mr. Ricardo hunched his shoulders. He peered round at Stonehouse,
frown