involuntarily from it, and from the scene without whose eternal
substance showed through the shadowy illusion of passing hansoms and
omnibuses, like the sole fact of the street, the king's voice rising
above the noises in tender caution to a heedless witness, "Have a care
of the axe; have a care," and then gravely to the headsman: "When I
stretch out my hands so, then--" The drums were ordered beaten, so that
we could not hear more; and we went out, and crossed among the cabs and
'busses to the horse-guards sitting shrunken on their steeds, and passed
between them into the park beyond where the beds of flowers spread their
soft autumnal bloom in the low sun of the September day.

[Illustration: THE HORSE GUARDS, WHITEHALL]




XI

GLIMPSES OF THE LOWLY AND THE LOWLIER


I liked walking through St. James's and through Green Park, especially
in the late afternoon when the tired poor began to droop upon the
benches, and, long before the spring damp was out of the ground, to
strew themselves on the grass, and sleep, face downward, among its
odorous roots. There was often the music of military bands to which
wide-spreading audiences of the less pretentious sort listened; in St.
James's there were seats along the borders of the ponds where, while the
chill evening breeze crisped the water, a good deal of energetic
courting went on. Besides, both were in the immediate neighborhood of