his mutilated hand. He was ready for anything: he knew he was himself safe to breakfast and dine, if poorly still sufficiently, and that his colleagues were perhaps even more crude and clumsy than usual; but a breath of popular passion had warmed his cheek and his heart, and he seemed to see, immensely magnified, the monstrosity of the great ulcers and sores of London—the sick, eternal misery crying out of the darkness in vain, confronted with granaries and treasure-houses and places of delight where shameless satiety kept guard. In such a mood as this he felt there was no need to consider, to reason: the facts themselves were as imperative as the cry of the drowning, since while pedantry gained time didn’t starvation and anguish gain it too? He knew Muniment disapproved of delay, that he held the day had come for a forcible rectification of horrible inequalities. In the last conversation they had had together his judicious friend had given him a more definite warrant than ever before for numbering him in the party of immediate action, though indeed he remarked on this occasion, once more, that that particular formula the little bookbinder appeared to have taken such a fancy to was mere gibberish. He hated this sort of pretentious label; it was fit only for politicians and amateurs. None the less he had been as plain as possible on the point that their game must be now to frighten society, and frighten it effectually; to make it believe that the swindled classes were at last fairly in league—had really grasped the idea that, closely combined, they would be irresistible. They were not in league and they hadn’t in their totality grasped any idea at all—Muniment was not slow to make that equally plain. All the same society was scareable, and every great scare was a gain for the people. If Hyacinth had needed warrant to-night for a faith transcending logic he would have found it in his recall of this quiet profession; but his friend’s words came back to him mainly to make him wonder what that friend had in his head just now. He took no part in any vociferation; he had called Schinkel to come round and sit beside him, and the two appeared to confer together in honest ease while the brown atmosphere grew denser, the passing to and fro of firebrands more lively and the flush of faces more portentous. What Hyacinth would have liked to know most of all was why Muniment had not mentioned to him first that Hoffendahl was in London and that he had seen him; for he _had_ seen him, though he had dodged Schinkel’s question—of that Hyacinth instantly felt sure. He would ask for more information later; and meanwhile he wished, without resentment, but with a patient conscious ache, that Muniment would treat him with a little more confidence. If there were a secret in regard to Hoffendahl—and there evidently was: Muniment, quite rightly, though he had dropped the announcement of his arrival for a certain effect, had no notion of