"Shall I take you with me now to undergo your punishment--and, I need scarcely tell you, it will not be a light one--or would you prefer a delay before you accompany me: a period of expiation, in some form I may decide on, with a hope of a reduction in your punishment at the end?" "A delay--a period of expiation, for God's sake!" "You are certain you prefer it?" "I implore it! I entreat it! For God's sake, grant me a respite!" "Be it so." II. The soul that had been Sir Edward's sickened with disgust. It was located in the body of a miserable cab-horse; one of the sorriest hacks in the East End of London, and practically fit only for the knacker, one would have said. It was a life the human soul found inexpressibly hateful. If this were expiation, it was in a purgatory indeed. But in a purgatory of filth and of disgusting sensations, instead of in a torturing purgatory of fire. To be lashed with the whip, and galled excruciatingly with the harness; to have the bit between the teeth, or tugging at the jaws unmercifully; and to have the blinkers ever blotting out the vision of the world: to strain every sinew, and have the service accepted thanklessly; to be tortured with discomfort, and to work absolutely without reward--it was a life devoid of even the meanest compensations: loathsome, and in every way abhorrent to thought. The horses, and other animals he met in the streets, he might have communicated with in some way or other, but his driver--a drunken, quarrelsome fellow--was always tugging at the bit or brandishing the whip; and if the poor animal even tried to turn his head, he was belaboured as brutally as if he had swerved or fallen asleep. There was no chance even of rubbing noses at the drinking-troughs, or of laying his head on the neck of a companion at the stand. And whatever might be taking place in the streets through which he was passing, he was debarred from bestowing on it even the most casual attention. His mental activity was ignored, or trampled on, with an indifference that was never once relaxed or relieved. His life was a horror unexampled in its profundity. The cruel debasement and defilement of it penetrated so deeply that he repented bitterly of the choice into which he had been betrayed. He would infinitely have preferred suffering among his equals in hell. A year of this life was as much as he could endure. One day he stumbled across a tram-line, and, falling, broke his leg--hopelessly snapping the tendon, and otherwise injuring himself--and he was carted off to the knackers to receive his _coup de grâce_. A moment or two before he was killed, the eyes of the animal lighted up with a strangely human expression--which was succeeded by a look of the most unappeasable despair. Evidently he had again seen the grey old man. But the Visitor's communication to him remained unrevealed, and it was probably torturing him still when he . . . died? THE FIELDS OF AMARANTH.