'Well, just so,' thought he; 'I'll have killed my father!
And this is Christmas-day!'
If Mr. Nicholson died, it was down this same road he must
journey to the grave; and down this road, on the same errand,
his wife had preceded him years before; and many other
leading citizens, with the proper trappings and attendance of
the end. And now, in that frosty, ill-smelling, straw-
carpeted, and ragged-cushioned cab, with his breath
congealing on the glasses, where else was John himself
advancing to?
The thought stirred his imagination, which began to
manufacture many thousand pictures, bright and fleeting, like
the shapes in a kaleidoscope; and now he saw himself, ruddy
and comfortered, sliding in the gutter; and, again, a little
woe-begone, bored urchin tricked forth in crape and weepers,
descending this same hill at the foot's pace of mourning
coaches, his mother's body just preceding him; and yet again,
his fancy, running far in front, showed him his destination -
now standing solitary in the low sunshine, with the sparrows
hopping on the threshold and the dead man within staring at
the roof - and now, with a sudden change, thronged about with
white-faced, hand-uplifting neighbours, and doctor bursting
through their midst and fixing his stethoscope as he went,
the policeman shaking a sagacious head beside the body. It
was to this he feared that he was driving; in the midst of
this he saw himself arrive, heard himself stammer faint
explanations, and felt the hand of the constable upon his
shoulder.
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