boy; he saw a new youth opening before him. And as not
unfrequently happens to middle-aged gentlemen when they see a new
youth opening before them, he found himself in the presence of
the police.

The policemen, after some ponderous questionings, collared both
the two enthusiasts. They were more respectful, however, to the
young man who had smashed the window, than to the miscreant who
had had his window smashed. There was an air of refined mystery
about Evan MacIan, which did not exist in the irate little
shopkeeper, an air of refined mystery which appealed to the
policemen, for policemen, like most other English types, are at
once snobs and poets. MacIan might possibly be a gentleman, they
felt; the editor manifestly was not. And the editor's fine
rational republican appeals to his respect for law, and his
ardour to be tried by his fellow citizens, seemed to the police
quite as much gibberish as Evan's mysticism could have done. The
police were not used to hearing principles, even the principles
of their own existence.

The police magistrate, before whom they were hurried and tried,
was a Mr. Cumberland Vane, a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman,
honourably celebrated for the lightness of his sentences and the
lightness of his conversation. He occasionally worked himself up
into a sort of theoretic rage about certain particular offenders,
such as the men who took pokers to their wives, talked in a
loose, sentimental way about the desirability of flogging them,
and was hopelessly bewildered by the fact that the wives seemed
even more angry with him than with their husbands. He was a tall,
spruce man, with a twist of black moustache and incomparable