At the Green Man at Barnet he got sulkily into his last chaise, and they pounded down five miles of a gentle slope, then drove stoutly up the easy ascent to Highgate. By this time the notion that Bourdillon would pass him unseen had got such hold upon him—though it was the unlikeliest thing in the world that Arthur could have got through his business so early—that his eyes raked every chaise they met, and a crowded coach by which they sped, as it crawled up the southern side of the hill, filled him with the darkest apprehensions. Had he given a moment’s thought to the state of the market, to the pressure of business which it must cause, and to the crowd, greedy for transfers, in which Arthur must take his turn, he would have seen that this fear was groundless. However, the true state of things was by and by brought home to his mind. He had directed the postboy to take him direct to the brokers’ in the City, and he had hardly exchanged the pleasant country roads of Highbury and Islington, with their villas and cow-farms, for the noisy, dirty thoroughfares of north London, before he was struck by the evidences of excitement that met his eyes. Lads, shouting raucously, ran about the busier streets, selling broadsheets, which were fought for and bought up with greedy haste. A stream of walkers, with their faces set one way, hastened along almost as fast as his post-chaise. Busy groups stood at the street corners, debating and gesticulating. As he advanced still farther, and crossed the boundary and began to thread the narrow streets of the City—it wanted a half hour of noon—he found himself hampered and almost stopped by the crowd which thronged the roadway, and seemed in its preoccupation to be insensible to the obstacles that barred its way and into which it cannoned at every stride. And still, with each yard that he advanced, the press increased. The signs of ferment became more evident. Distracted men, hatless and red-hot with haste, regardless of everything but the errand on which they were bent, sprang from offices, hurled themselves through the press, leaped on their fellows’ backs, tore on their way; while those whom they had maltreated did not even look round, but continued their talk, unaware of the outrage. Some pushed through the press, so deep in thought that they saw no one and might have walked a country lane, while others, meeting as by appointment, seized one another, shook one another, bawled in each other’s faces as if both had become suddenly deaf. And now and again the whole tormented mass, seething in the narrow lanes or narrower alleys, swayed this way or that under the impulse of some unknown mysterious impulse, some warning, some call to action.