,
to cover his face with his hands. So he sat, while the cabman toasted
the publican, and the publican toasted the cabman, and both reviewed the
affairs of the nation; so he still sat, when his master condescended to
return, and drive off at last downhill, along the curve of Lynedoch
Place; but even so sitting, as he passed the end of his father's street,
he took one glance from between shielding fingers, and beheld a doctor's
carriage at the door.

"Well, just so," thought he; "I'll have killed my father! And this is
Christmas Day!"

If Mr. Nicholson died, it was down this same road he must journey to the
grave; and down this road, on the same errand, his wife had preceded him
years before; and many other leading citizens, with the proper trappings
and attendance of the end. And now, in that frosty, ill-smelling,
straw-carpeted, and ragged-cushioned cab, with his breath congealing on
the glasses, towards what other destination was John himself advancing?

The thought stirred his imagination, which began to manufacture many
thousand pictures, bright and fleeting like the shapes in a
kaleidoscope; and now he saw himself, ruddy and comfortered, sliding in
the gutter; and again a little woe-begone, bored urchin tricked forth in
crape and weepers, descending this same hill at the foot's-pace of
mourning coaches, his mother's body just preceding him; and yet again,
his fancy, running far in front, showed him the house at
Murrayfield--now standing solitary in the low sunshine, with the
sparrows hopping on the threshold and the dead man within staring at the
roof, and now, with a sudden change, thronged about with white-faced,
hand-uplifting neighbours, the doctor bursting through their midst and
fixing his stethoscope as he went, the policeman shaking a sagacious
head beside the body. It was to this he feared that he was driving; in
the midst of this he saw himself arrive, heard himself stammer faint
explanations, and felt the hand of the constable upon his shoulder.
Heavens! how he wished he had played the manlier part; how he despised
himself that he had fled that fatal neighbourhood when all was quiet,
and should now be tamely travelling back when it was thronging with
avengers!

Any strong degree of passion lends, even to the dullest, the forces of
the imagination. And so now as he dwelt on what was probably awaiting
him at the end of this distressful drive--John, who saw things little,
remembered them less, and coul