“They all knew that, yet he made them so that they couldn’t help their feelings. My father-in-law says as soon as they retired to the jury-room to find their verdict, old Bill Oaks--you know the old prize-fighter what keeps the Blue Swan at Hackney--who was on the jury, he just spat in the corner and wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and he says, ‘Well, mateys, I’d reckon we’d ’ang no more women.’” “Bill Oaks said that?” “Those were his words. And it just shows the power that young chap must have had to make a common fellow like old Bill Oaks say a thing like that.” “Some men are born lucky. With a mind of that sort he will have made a fortune in no time. In a year or so he will be keeping his yacht and driving his motor-car. It is a funny world when you come to think about it. Here is a chap like me, been a clerk in the Providential for thirty-five years. My hours are nine-thirty till five; I have never once been late, nor had a day off for illness; and my salary per week is thirty-eight and a tizzey, with a pound a week pension at sixty provided I keep up my payments to the fund. I have never done a wrong action as far as I know; I go to church once on Sunday; I teach in the Sunday school; I give five shillings to the poor every Christmas; I have brought up five children well and decently; I always acted the part of the gentleman to my wife while she was alive, and now she is dead I always keep fresh flowers on her grave summer and winter; I’ve paid my rates and taxes regular; the landlord has never had to ask me twice for the rent; and what’s it all amount to? Why, I leave off just where I began. Yet I consider myself a cut above this young man, with all his gifts, who will make a fortune by saving murderers from the gallows.” The speaker, a sallow, stunted little fellow, uttered his words in a quiet, yet dogged staccato, as though he were issuing a challenge which he knew could not be taken up. His sharp, quaint cockney speech was almost musical in its incisive energy. “Happiness don’t depend on money,” said his friend. “You have got to have money, though, before you can believe it.” Northcote overheard this conversation while he munched a sandwich. It afforded him the keenest interest. He moved out into the eager crowd which thronged the Strand. Yet again his old passion for perambulating the streets came upon him. There was a sense of adventure in dodging the traffic at a breakneck pace, and in elbowing his way through the press. Until the evening he wandered about in the mud and the December mists. He was sick and weary; the conflict within him gave him no rest; yet there was a fierce joy to be gained in mingling with the virile, many-sided life that was about him everywhere.