the throne. The article was "epoch-making," a landmark in his
life; he had taken rank at a bound, waked up a national glory. A
national glory was needed, and it was an immense convenience he was
there. What all this meant rolled over me, and I fear I grew a
little faint--it meant so much more than I could say "yea" to on
the spot. In a flash, somehow, all was different; the tremendous
wave I speak of had swept something away. It had knocked down, I
suppose, my little customary altar, my twinkling tapers and my
flowers, and had reared itself into the likeness of a temple vast
and bare. When Neil Paraday should come out of the house he would
come out a contemporary. That was what had happened: the poor man
was to be squeezed into his horrible age. I felt as if he had been
overtaken on the crest of the hill and brought back to the city. A
little more and he would have dipped down the short cut to
posterity and escaped.



CHAPTER IV.



When he came out it was exactly as if he had been in custody, for
beside him walked a stout man with a big black beard, who, save
that he wore spectacles, might have been a policeman, and in whom
at a second glance I recognised the highest contemporary
enterprise.

"This is Mr. Morrow," said Paraday, looking, I thought, rather
white: "he wants to publish heaven knows what about me."