Ahead of him was the Express Train, a public-house which had presumably been built and named at the time of the coming of the railway. It was closing time by now, and a stream of gesticulating figures was being disgorged upon the crowded pavement. Mr. Tovey looked up as he heard the turmoil. The cold air and comparative darkness, after the warmth and light of the bar, seemed to have had an unsteadying effect upon the ejected guests. They lurched about the pavement singing snatches of ribald songs, arguing heatedly in loud voices. Mr. Tovey frowned. Nice way to spend a Sunday evening! Thank God, he didn’t live in Praed Street, anyhow. He wasn’t going to be barged off the pavement by a lot of drunken hooligans, not he. Putting his head a trifle further down, like a bull about to charge, he strode straight ahead in an undeviating line. One man lurched into him, another jostled him from behind, and a menacing voice, its effect somewhat marred by a loud hiccough, called out, “’ere, ’oo the ’ell d’yer think you’re pushin’?” And then Mr. Tovey, with a queer strangled cry, suddenly collapsed in a heap upon the muddy pavement. Chapter II The Herbalist It is the proud boast of our modern educationalists that the process of forcing knowledge down unwilling throats, known as compulsory education, has resulted in the triumph of science over superstition. Alchemy and astrology, the magic of the Middle Ages, have given place to chemistry and astronomy, the mysteries of which are displayed before the wondering eyes of the elementary scholar. The Age of Superstition is commonly supposed to have fled before the progress of the Age of Materialism. This supposition is demonstrably false. At no other age in the earth’s history has superstition owned so many votaries. From the most rapt spiritualist to the man who refuses to walk under a ladder, the world is full of people who allow superstition to play an important part in their lives. In the neighbourhood of Praed Street fortune tellers and interpreters of dreams are superstition’s most popular ministers, though it may come as a surprise to many that a brass plate nailed to the door of a house in the Harrow Road advertises the existence of the British College of Astrology. Even Alchemy is not without its devotees, although the alchemist has forsaken the more picturesque apparatus of his stock-in-trade. He now owns a small shop, the darker the better, and fills the windows with a curious assortment of dried herbs, each with a notice affixed to it describing its virtues. You may go in and buy two pennyworth of some dried plant with a high-sounding Latin name, the herbalist assuring you that, mixed with boiling water and drunk as tea, it will cure the most obscure disease. If you have sufficient faith, it probably will.