up and hid it. He stumbled at steps and found himself in a gallery. He
heard a sobbing, and found two scared little girls crouched by a railing.
These children became silent at the near sound of feet. He tried to
console them, but they were very still until he left them. Then as he
receded he could hear them sobbing again.

Presently he found himself at the foot of a staircase and near a wide
opening. He saw a dim twilight above this and ascended out of the
blackness into a street of moving ways again. Along this a disorderly
swarm of people marched shouting. They were singing snatches of the song
of the revolt, most of them out of tune. Here and there torches flared
creating brief hysterical shadows. He asked his way and was twice puzzled
by that same thick dialect. His third attempt won an answer he could
understand. He was two miles from the wind-vane offices in Westminster,
but the way was easy to follow.

When at last he did approach the district of the wind-vane offices it
seemed to him, from the cheering processions that came marching along the
Ways, from the tumult of rejoicing, and finally from the restoration of
the lighting of the city, that the overthrow of the Council must already
be accomplished. And still no news of his absence came to his ears.

The re-illumination of the city came with startling abruptness. Suddenly
he stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world was
incandescent. The light found him already upon the outskirts of the
excited crowds that choked the ways near the wind-vane offices, and the
sense of visibility and exposure that came with it turned his colourless
intention of joining Ostrog to a keen anxiety.

For a time he was jostled, obstructed, and endangered by men hoarse and