However, the man seemed to be satisfied and led the way, and they walked down the little crooked street called the Strand and came to a little tumble-down house by the dock, and there they found the woman even as the man had told. To Francis the adventure seemed to be complete and fantastic, and he felt that he was outside it, that the world had stopped and that it was very cold. Then he felt that it was horrible and intolerable, simply because nothing could happen unless he made it happen, and action had never been asked of him before. There was a tallow candle in a bottle, but it gave very little light. The moon shone through the window, and its light was very pitiless and grim. The man folded his arms and said with a sort of insistence: "You do know how a man could do it!" The cold dead harshness of his voice brought Francis out of his fantasy, and at last he found the word that had been buzzing in his brain ever since he saw the man sitting in his chair: Murder. "No," he said, and he was astonished at the hardness of his own voice. He turned heavily, but the man was quicker than he. He saw him dart through the door, run a little way up the street, go into a house, and in an instant there sprang up a crowd of people whispering, murmuring, buzzing, huddling, and crushing round the door of the little dark house. They were a little awed when they saw the curate, but the crowd hummed as new people came running up and the tale was told again. Suddenly Francis felt a hand on his arm, and there was the man clinging to him while the beadle and the policeman were tugging at him to take him away. The man would not let go, but he was very strong, and for some way Francis had to move with him through the crowd. Then at last he wrenched free and watched the three figures cleave into the crowd, part it, and then be swallowed up. He found himself standing at a place where, between two houses, he could see the water swelling with the tide and a black boat rocking, and over all the light of the moon. The machinery of the law passed over the murderer and he was hanged, but Francis never told a soul how he had been drawn into the eddy of the crime. His experience produced in him a feeling of profound depression, from which he recovered slowly and painfully to find that human beings had emerged from the landscape as they had never done before. They demanded, a different sort of attention from that which he had always given them, and at first he disliked them heartily. He saw them in their habits, sadly, as they were--eating, drinking, sleeping, gossiping, with very little to vary the monotony save foolish love affairs and mean jealousies and petty quarrels. Nothing that they did, not even their sins, seemed to be worth while. What bothered him most was that he found himself sympathising with the criminal and curiously desirous of defending him against the society which had answered ferocity with ferocity.