ch as that which
was worn by the servants of the house, only that it was not blue, but of
this absolute sable. He had, like the servants, a kind of sword by his
side. It was only when he had come quite close to the crescent of
the seven and flung up his face to look at them, that Syme saw, with
thunder-struck clearness, that the face was the broad, almost ape-like
face of his old friend Gregory, with its rank red hair and its insulting
smile.

"Gregory!" gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. "Why, this is the
real anarchist!"

"Yes," said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, "I am the
real anarchist."

"'Now there was a day,'" murmured Bull, who seemed really to have fallen
asleep, "'when the sons of God came to present themselves before the
Lord, and Satan came also among them.'"

"You are right," said Gregory, and gazed all round. "I am a destroyer. I
would destroy the world if I could."

A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and he spoke
brokenly and without sequence.

"Oh, most unhappy man," he cried, "try to be happy! You have red hair
like your sister."

"My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world," said Gregory.
"I thought I hated everything more than common men can hate anything;
but I find that I do not hate everything so much as I hate you!"

"I never hated you," said Syme very sadly.

Then out of this unintelligible creature the last thunders broke.

"You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what
you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! You
are the police--the great fat, smiling men in blue and buttons! You are
the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul
alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been
broken? We in revolt talk all kind of nonsense doubtless about this
crime or that crime of the Government. It is all folly! The only crime
of the Government is that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the
supreme power is that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being cruel.
I do not curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you for
being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come down
from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you have had no
troubles. Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule all mankind,
if I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a real agony
such as I--"

Syme sprang to his fee