After Dr. Duncan had gone, Hudson opened the window, and leaning on the sill, stayed there motionless, and thinking of many things as he looked out on the beautiful court, with its splashing fountain, and across the green to the Thames beyond, and the distant Surrey shore. This is one of the most delightful views in London, and on such a quiet summer night as this was, with a clear sky filled with stars above it, I doubt whether any of the great cities of Europe could produce a more impressive scene than this oasis in the great desert of bricks and mortar, this quiet old-fashioned garden between the quaint buildings--all, too, so full of memories and associations. What memories of his thoughtless childhood, of his clever and flattered boyhood with its high hopes, and of his utterly wasted manhood, succeeded each other in crowds in the young man's mind, as he gazed out upon that peaceful scene! "Ay!" he thought, "I'm nearly thirty now--and what have I done?--nothing--and I'm becoming weaker and more idiotic every day, drifting--yes, Duncan is quite right--I _am_ drifting. It will soon be too late to travel back, too." Oppressed by his melancholy reflections he closed the window with a slam, and returning to the table mixed himself a stiff glass of grog. After drinking it he mixed himself another, and by the time he had finished that one he felt more comfortable. His melancholy mood departed and was succeeded by a very sanguine one. He became brave and hopeful once again, and he said to himself, "It it not too late; I will do something yet, and astonish all these sober dunces who shake their heads and whisper to each other that poor Tommy has gone to the dogs. I have ten times more ability than they have, and I will show them what I can do when I like. I will knock off this silly trifling and buckle to without delay." And he made a great many very noble plans and resolutions of reform under the genial influence of his hot spirits and water, as he had done dozens of times before--plans and resolutions that would evaporate from his brain as quickly as the alcoholic fumes that begat them, to be replaced by nerveless despair and sullen recklessness. CHAPTER III. THE SECRET SOCIETY. Those secret societies, Nihilist or whatever else they may be called, whose aim is the subversion of all existing institutions, find their recruits chiefly among the discontented, those whose hopes have been dashed to the ground, whose lives have been failures. If to this quality of conscious failure be added a nature enthusiastic and dreamy, the very readiest material for the dangerous conspirator is presented. There are many men of this class in every civilized nation, and the ranks of the fraternities are full of them. As education spreads there will be still more; for the means of satisfying the ambitions and wants that education brings cannot increase in anything like proportion to those ever-multiplying wants.