When he turned out again into the streets a newsboy came running round the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue. He was crying, “Here y’are hextry special. Sensational murder trial--sudden deff of the judge.” Northcote bought another newspaper and opened it under a lamp. In the space reserved for the latest telegrams, these words were printed upside down, “We regret to learn that Mr. Justice Brudenell expired in his room shortly after the conclusion of the murder trial at the Central Criminal Court this evening. The cause of death is believed to be heart failure.” XXXI MEDIOCRITY VERSUS GENIUS Northcote could confess no surprise. But it struck him with a sense of drama, the thrill of the unexpected which underlies the impact of the common, that he should not have discerned the end of this aged man to be so near. The sounds he had heard as he rushed from the room must have been caused by that venerable figure falling to the floor. Sharply, however, as he felt the knife of reality in all its brutal power, he yet refrained from speculating upon the scope of its present operation. He was now tired out; his brain was heavy. He pushed on straight to his attic, climbed the dark stairs, and in a little while was curled under a blanket with a merciful sleep blotting out the actual. He was summoned peremptorily from oblivion by the noise made by the old charwoman in drawing back the curtains which divided his garret into two apartments. “Quarter to eight, sir.” “Ay, ay,” he muttered, stretching his limbs and brushing the sleep from his eyes. His slumber had been that of abject weariness; deep, dreamless, undisturbed. He jumped out of bed, slipped on a dressing-gown that hung in rags, and felt himself to be once more the complete and valiant man. When he sat down to breakfast he sent out the old woman to procure the morning journals. Throughout the operation of dressing, his mind, inflamed with conquest as it was, was filled with thoughts of the judge. In spite of its length, his career on the bench had only been a qualified success; he had never lacked adverse criticism. In the eyes of many he had never been quite strong enough for his position. Upon the arrival of the newspapers, Northcote turned first to the obituary notices, rather than to the accounts of the trial in which his own personal triumph would be displayed. Following the custom of bestowing even more indiscriminate eulogy upon mediocrity when it is dead than it receives when it is living, the newspapers vied with one another in descanting upon Sir Joseph Brudenell’s services to the public, and his qualities of heart and mind. It brought immense relief to Northcote that this was the case. He was in no mood to suffer disparagement of that venerable figure.