Though I have seen many distressing sights during the course of a varied life, I have never felt so near sickness, so physically overcome, as amidst that cheery, bustling, chatting crowd. I drifted away aimlessly, filled with an absurd terror, which caused me almost to cringe when I passed a policeman. Ridiculous as the notion was, I fancied that Karl, his father, Maggie, and myself were _participes criminis_, sharers in the awful secret which led to that poor mangled body being carried to a mortuary. It is all very well now to smile at the shaken nerves which induced this shrinking, self-condemnatory frame of mind. It was very real and terrible then, nor was it lessened by the knowledge that my friends would probably suffer from the same delusion in their turn. Slinking, conscience-stricken, through the barrier, I saw a refreshment buffet. To this day I can recall the surprise of the barmaid when I grabbed a bottle of French brandy and poured out what she said was two-shillings’ worth of best cognac, “warranted pure,” which I drank neat. “Well, I never!” she gasped. “Nor I, hardly ever,” I managed to say, for the ardent spirit reinvigorated me. And let me interpolate here, as a breathing-space in a thrilling moment, that it is a fine thing never to drink brandy when in good health; thus it becomes an invaluable tonic in physical suffering or mental depression. Well, I hastened to the hotel, refusing a cab, in the belief that the brandy and the exercise would restore the disturbed poise of my faculties. The walk was a trifle longer than I had counted on, so a full hour elapsed between our parting and our meeting. As I expected, Karl was in a very distressed state, and I was called on to deride in him the foolish conceit which had shaken my very soul at the docks. His father’s British phlegm was superb on this trying occasion. To him, Constantine was an admitted scoundrel, and a “nigger” at that. “Never heard such nonsense in my life!” he declared, in the true “Confound it, sir! what d’ye mean?” manner of John Bull, which a Scotsman quickly makes his own when he comes South. “Of course, I am sorry this Armenian firebrand has taken his own life, but it is quite evident that if he did not face an Eternal Judge he would soon be called on to face an earthly one. You talk about personal responsibility for the death of a madman, a loony who has visions and carries a long knife concealed on his person! What next, I wonder? My firm belief is that his untimely decease was a dispensation of Providence!” Having thus called in the big battalion of the British nation, Mr. Grier preened his chest and was for an immediate return to Oxford, where he would remain with his son until the end of term. You cannot argue with a man who describes such a tragedy as Constantine’s as an “untimely decease.” The phrase lent to our discussion a grim humor, of which my excellent friend was sublimely unconscious.