“Because the old has betrayed them?” said the young man, with fear in his voice. His visitor left the question unanswered. “They await the advent,” he said, after a silence in which both breathed close, “of a second Failure to save them from themselves. Only that can prevent them dashing out their brains against the blank wall that has come to stand before them.” “I believe you to be right, sir,” said the advocate, slowly, as his eyes traversed the chaste delicacy of the face which was framed in shadows. “The Great Renunciator who first reduces this failure to terms,” said the scarecrow, “will have a sterner task than Jesus had.” “Yet, sir, you come to one who is almost fainting by the bleak wayside.” “Have I not listened to your oratory? Do I not discern you to stand at the parting of the ways?” “Yes, at the parting of the ways,” said the young man heavily. “The hour is at hand when one whose poverty is bitter must make his choice.” “I have prayed for you,” said his visitor, with such a perfect simplicity that it filled the eyes of the young advocate with tears. “Your ordeal is terrible, for I discern you to be a man of great power.” “Poverty is a deadly evil,” said Northcote. “Yet I would have you beware of riches,” said his visitor. “Think of the cruel treachery with which they use so many. See how they have betrayed our own fair land. And it is one such as you, in his virgin immunity, who is called upon to release her from their false embraces.” “I, sir!” exclaimed the young man, with wild eyes and his heart beating violently. “I, without clothes to my skin, without food in my belly, and who to-morrow will have no roof under which to rest his head!” The wan smile of the scarecrow embraced his own mutilated hat, broken boots, and ragged condition. “You may or you may not be the emancipator,” said the scarecrow, peering at him earnestly, “yet the veritable great one whom I see configured before me is some such man as you. I have listened many weeks to your oratory, and you have a strange power. Your voice is noble, and speaks words of authority. Even if you are not the demigod for whom the age is asking,--and, my dear friend, far be it from me to say you are not,--you were yet formed by Nature to do a momentous work for your country.” “In its casual wards,” said the young man, with an outburst of bitterness.