As he raced along in the company of these wonderful thoughts through the south of London, he recognized in himself all the signs that declare Truth’s authentic champion. It would be his to deliver more than one rueful blow upon the close-locked portals of pedantry. “The purblind old man who dares to occupy the seat of judgment, his authority shall be traversed, it shall be rent in pieces. As for that amazing creature who will dare to stand up for the Crown, who will propose to do to death a human being with that bleak and irascible voice, and the operations of that arrested growth he calls his intellect, an awful example will have to be made of him.” There was no end to the succession of deserted streets. Water swam in shallow pools along the black pavements which seemed to reflect the color of the sky. The numerous lamps, picked out as so many dull, yellow balls in the surrounding blackness, suffused their oppressive rays along the long, flat surfaces so that they appeared to shine without giving forth a radiance. How vague and vast seemed these early hours before the dawn! They did not contain a living soul. The sky, the streets, the dark houses, the bare trees in the gardens and at the sides of the roads were soundless, empty, destitute of life. A quietness so profound appeared uncanny on the outskirts of pandemonium. But astonishing, desolating as it was, it seemed to aid the furious brain that was borne so fast in its midst. There was only the echo of the advocate’s own feet, which came weirdly from across the way, and the high and labored breathing of his own body. By the time the hour of seven chimed out from the half-dozen neighboring steeples of a population that was beginning to cluster much closer together, he divined that he was pressing nearer to the heart of the metropolis. He did not stay to inquire of the occasional wayfarer who was abroad in these regions, but set his face into the ruck of the streets, where the dark forms of the houses rose like an impenetrable and endless forest. No fears assailed him as to whether he would reach his home--the coldest, most inhospitable home that was ever called upon to harbor a spirit with such widespread, space-cleaving pinions. His feet seemed to devour the pavements. His stride was great, elastic, and unflagging; it was propelled by the lungs, heart, and muscles of the athlete. In the swing of the arms, the lunge of the limbs, the lissom sway of the body, there was fine physical power, and the seething engines that presided over this massive yet elastic framework were like the boilers of a locomotive which eat up the miles without fatigue. When excited into action on the football field the feeling was always upon him that no puny human agent could stay his course. The feeling was upon him now in an intensified degree. With will and muscle coöperating to overstride the darkness, he longed for opposition to declare itself that he might trample it down.