“I’m ’alf out o’ meself, that’s what I am; I’ll never sleep until I find ’em. Look ’ere! _Tell_ me where they are, sir?” “I am sorry, I cannot.” In the unmoving fish-white face his dead eyes, straining in their sockets, began to glow again with that queer yellow glare, as though alive with the spirit that dwells where light has never come; the spirit that possesses those dim multitudes who know no influence but that of force, no reason, and no gentleness, since these have never come their way; who know only that they must keep that little which they have, since that which they have not is so great and so desirable; the dim multitudes who, since the world began, have lived from hand to mouth, like dogs crouched over their stale bones, snarling at such as would take those poor bones from them. “I’m ’er ’usband, an’ I mean to ’ave ’er, alive or dead.” And I saw that this was not a man who spoke, but the very self of the brute beast that lurks beneath the surface of our State; the very self of the chained monster whom Nature tortures with the instinct for possession, and man with whips drives from attainment. And behind his figure in the broad flowery road I seemed to see the countless masses of his fellows filing out of their dark streets, out of their alleys and foul lodgings, in a never-ending river of half-human flesh, with their faces set one way. They covered the whole road, and every inlet was alive with them; and all the air was full of the dull surging of thousands more. Of every age, in every sort of rags; on all their faces the look that said: “All my life I have been given that which will keep me alive, that, and no more. What I have got I have got; no one shall wrench it from my teeth! I live as the dogs; as the dogs shall my actions be! I am the brute beast; have I the time, the chance, the money to learn gentleness and decency? Let me be! Touch not my gnawed bones!” They stood there--a great dark sea stretching out to the farther limits of the sight; no sound came from their lips, but all their eyes glowed with that yellow glare, and I saw that if I took my glance off them they would spring at me. “You defy me, Guv’nor?” “I am obliged to.” “One day I’ll meet yer, then, for all your money, and I’ll let yer know!” He took up the handles of his barrow, and slowly, with a sullen lurch, wheeled it away, looking neither to his right nor left. And behind him, down the road with its gardens and tall houses, moved the millions of his fellows; and, as they passed in silence, each seemed to say: “One day I’ll meet you, and--I’ll let you know!” The road lay empty again beneath the sun; nursemaids wheeled their perambulators, the lilac-trees dropped blossom, the policemen at the corners wrote idly in their little books. There was no sign of what had passed. OLD AGE III OLD AGE He came running out of the darkness, and spoke at once: “Go an’ see my poor mother, gentleman; go and see my poor father an’ mother!”