Bascombe was chagrined to find that the persuasive eloquence with
which he hoped soon to play upon the convictions of jurymen at his
own sweet will, had not begotten even communicativenes, not to say
confidence, in the mind of a parson who knew himself fooled,--and
partly that it gave him cause to doubt how far it might be safe to
urge his attack in another and to him more important quarter. He had
a passion for convincing people, this Hercules of the new world. He
sauntered slowly back to his aunt's, husbanding his cigar a little,
and looking up at the moon now and then,--not to admire the marvel
of her shining, but to think yet again what a fit type of an effete
superstition she was, in that she retained her power of fascination
even in death.

Wingfold walked slowly away, with his eyes on the ground gliding
from under his footsteps. It was only eleven o'clock, but this the
oldest part of the town seemed already asleep. They had not met a
single person on their way, and hardly seen a lighted window. But he
felt unwilling to go home, which at first he was fain to attribute
to his having drunk a little more wine than was good for him, whence
this feverishness and restlessness so strange to his experience. In
the churchyard, on the other side of which his lodging lay, he
turned aside from the flagged path and sat down upon a gravestone,
where he was hardly seated ere he began to discover that it was
something else than the wine which had made him feel so
uncomfortable. What an objectionable young fellow that Bascombe was!
--presuming and arrogant to a degree rare, he hoped, even in a