For the better part of two minutes he went on from this mild beginning to a descriptive elaboration of Bealby. For the first time in his life Bealby learnt how unfavourable was the impression he might leave on a fellow creature’s mind. “Took even my matches!” cried the tramp, and tried this statement over with variations. “First that old fool with his syringe!” The tramp’s voice rose in angry protest. “Here’s a chap dying epilepsy on your doorstep and all you can do is to squirt cold water at him! Cold water! Why you might _kill_ a man doing that! And then say you’d thought’d bring ’im ränd! Bring ’im ränd! You be jolly glad I didn’t stash your silly face in. You [misbegotten] old fool! What’s a shilling for wetting a man to ’is skin. Wet through I was. Running inside my shirt,—dripping.... And then the blooming boy clears! “_I_ don’t know what boys are coming to!” cried the tramp. “These board schools it is. Gets ’old of everything ’e can and bunks! Gaw! if I get my ’ands on ’im, I’ll show ’im. I’ll—” For some time the tramp revelled in the details, for the most part crudely surgical, of his vengeance upon Bealby.... “Then there’s that dog bite. ’Ow do I know ’ow that’s going to turn ät? If I get ’idrophobia, blowed if I don’t _bite_ some of ’em. ’Idrophobia. Screaming and foaming. Nice death for a man—my time o’ life! Bark I shall. Bark and bite. “And this is your world,” said the tramp. “This is the world you put people into and expect ’em to be ’appy.... “I’d like to bite that dough-faced fool with the silly ’at. I’d enjoy biting _’im_. I’d spit it out but I’d bite it right enough. Wiping abät with ’is _’O. Gaw!_ Get off my ground! Be orf with you. Slash. ’E ought to be shut up. “Where’s the justice of it?” shouted the tramp. “Where’s the right and the sense of it? What ’ave _I_ done that I should always get the under side? Why should _I_ be stuck on the under side of everything? There’s worse men than me in all sorts of positions.... Judges there are. ’Orrible Kerecters. Ministers and people. I’ve read abät ’em in the papers.... “It’s we tramps are the scapegoats. Somebody’s got to suffer so as the police can show a face. Gaw! Some of these days I’ll do something. I’ll do something. You’ll drive me too far with it, I tell you—” He stopped suddenly and listened. Bealby had creaked. “Gaw! What can one do?” said the tramp after a long interval. And then complaining more gently, the tramp began to feel about to make his simple preparations for the night. “’Unt me out of this, I expect,” said the tramp. “And many sleeping in feather beds that ain’t fit to ’old a candle to me. Not a hordinary farthing candle....” § 5 The subsequent hour or so was an interval of tedious tension for Bealby.