It was drawing on to noon -
two-and-twenty hours since he had broken bread; in the
interval, he had suffered tortures of sorrow and alarm, and
been partly tipsy; and though it was impossible to say he
slept, yet when the cab stopped and the cabman thrust his
head into the window, his attention had to be recalled from
depths of vacancy.
'If you'll no' STAND me a dram,' said the driver, with a
well-merited severity of tone and manner, 'I dare say ye'll
have no objection to my taking one mysel'?'
'Yes - no - do what you like,' returned John; and then, as he
watched his tormentor mount the stairs and enter the whisky-
shop, there floated into his mind a sense as of something
long ago familiar. At that he started fully awake, and
stared at the shop-fronts. Yes, he knew them; but when? and
how? Long since, he thought; and then, casting his eye
through the front glass, which had been recently occluded by
the figure of the jarvey, he beheld the tree-tops of the
rookery in Randolph Crescent. He was close to home - home,
where he had thought, at that hour, to be sitting in the
well-remembered drawing-room in friendly converse; and,
instead - !
It was his first impulse to drop into the bottom of the cab;
his next, to cover his face with his hands. So he sat, while
the cabman toasted the publican, and the publican toasted the
cabman, and both reviewed the affairs of the nation; so he
still sat, when his master condescended to return, and drive
off at last down-hill, along the curve of Lynedoch Place; but
even so sitting, as he passed the end of his father's street,
he took one glance from between shielding fingers, and beheld
a doctor's carriage at the door.
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