ke on anyone
that I cannot now say, and nobody else seems able to remember, what the
nature of the illness was. But I remember that he was very ill indeed;
and one day, meeting one of his fellow clerks in Cheapside, he told me
that Barber's death was only a question of hours. But he recovered,
after being, as I heard, for a long time in a state of lethargy which
looked mortal.

It was when he was out again that I--and not only myself but
others--noticed for the first time that his character was changing. He
had always been a laughing, undecided sort of person; he had a facile
laugh for everything; he would meet you and begin laughing before there
was anything to laugh at. This was certainly harmless, and he had a
deserved reputation for good humor.

But his manners now became subject to strange fluctuations, which were
very objectionable while they lasted. He would be overtaken with fits of
sullenness in company; at times he was violent. He took to rambling in
strange places at night, and more than once he appeared at his office in
a very battered condition. It is difficult not to think that he provoked
the rows he got into himself. One good thing was that the impulses which
drove him to do such actions were violent rather than enduring; in fact,
I often thought that if the force and emotion of these bouts ever came
to last longer, he would be a very dangerous character. This was not
only my opinion; it was the opinion of a number of respectable people
who knew him as well as I did.

I recollect that one evening, as three or four of us were coming out of
a music hall, Barber offered some freedom to a lady which the gentleman
with her--a member of Parliament, I was told--thought fit to resent. He
turned fiercely on Barber with his hand raised--and then suddenly grew
troubled, stepped back, lost countenance. This could not have been
physical fear, for he was a strongly built, handsome man--a giant
compared to the insignificant Barber. But Barber was looking at him, and
there was something not only in his face, but, so to speak,
_encompassing_ him--I can't well describe it--a sort of abstract
right--an uncontrolled power--a command of the issues of life and death,
which made one quail.

Everybody standing near felt it; I could see that from their looks. Only
for a moment it lasted, and then the spell was broken--really as if some
formidable spectacle had been swept away from before our eyes; and there
was Barber, a mo