And now happened to him the most momentous event of his life--though
nothing could have seemed more commonplace.

It was an old fellow named Tom Bates who had called him--father to
that Fred arrested for the murder of his wife--a Yarmouth fisher and
herring-curer.

And when Hogarth twisted round, with that stare of his large and
bloodshot eye, "Here", said the old man, "take them"--holding out a
basket of herrings.

Hogarth seemed not to understand, but then said: "All those for me?"

"Every bloomin' one!" answered Bates, with the dropped jaw of
pantomime, and a far-away look of blue astonishment which he had.

"It is extremely handsome of you. Can you spare all that--?"

"Spare, _ya'as!_ They're easy enough come by, for that matter. Why,
the day's work of a fisherman gives him enough fish to live on all
the week, and he could lie around idling the other six days, if he
chose, only anybody can't live on nothing but fish ".

These words, destined to produce a horror of great darkness, and a
cup of trembling of which all the nations should drink, hardly
affected Hogarth at the time. He _did_, indeed, shoot an interested
glance at the old man, but the next moment his mind, numb that
morning, was left dark.

"Here--take them--they are yours", said Bates. "But with regard to