to witness some event commensurate in importance with
the greatness of their number. He felt sure of that. Yes--before long
they would swarm. Incontestably they would swarm!--Again he drew aside
the velvet drapery and looked down curiously upon the arena and its
occupants. For a new idea had come to him regarding these last. They
still presented the effect of a throng of busy, angry insects. But
Richard knew better. He had penetrated their disguise, a disguise
assumed to insure their ultimate purpose with the greater certainty. He
knew them to be human. He knew their purpose to be a moral one. And,
looking upon them, recognising the spirit which animated them, he was
taken with a reverence and sympathy for average, toiling humanity
unfelt by him before. For he saw that by these, the workers, the final
issues are inevitably decided, by these the final verdict is
pronounced. Individually they may be contemptible, but in their
corporate intelligence, corporate strength, they are little short of
majestic. Of art, letters, practical civilisation, even religion, even,
in a degree, nature herself, they are alike architects and judges. It
must be so. It always has been so time out of mind in point of fact.
And then he wondered why they were so patient of constraint? Why had
they not risen long ago and obliterated the pretensions of those
arrogant, indolent larvae peopling the angular apertures of the honey
cells--those larvae of whom, by birth and wealth, sinfulness and
uselessness, he was himself so conspicuous an example?

But then still clearer understanding of this whole strange matter came
to him.--They, like all else,--mighty though they are in their
corporate intention,--are obedient to fate. They can only act when the
time is ripe. And then he understood yet more clearly. Their purpose in
congregating here, whether they were conscious of it or not, was
retributive. They were present to witness and to accomplish an act of
foreordained justice.--Richard paused a moment, struggling with his own
thought. And then he saw quite plainly that he himself was the object
of that act of foreordained justice, he himself was the centre of that
dimly-apprehended, approaching event. His punishment, his deliverance
by means of that punishment, was that which had brought this great
multitude together here to-night. He was awed. Yet with that awe came
thankfulness, gratitude, an immense sense of relief. He need not seek
self-obliteration,