OF THE END OF THE BLIZZARD, AND OF SIMON MAGUS. HOW MR. TAYLOR FOUND
A DOCTOR. OF A CHASE THROUGH THE SNOW, AND A CANAL-LOCK. WHAT WAS
FOUND IN IT. BUT SIMON WAS INVISIBLE
How sweet and white and silent was the huge shroud of snow that lay
so carefully on road and roof alike; unbroken, in this untrodden
stillness, by so much as the memory of a rut inherited from yesterday's
traffic; unmelted, even on the chimney-stacks, by the expiring efforts
of yesterday's fires! How satisfied the stars that began to twinkle
through the clearing veil of the snowdrift dying down, that the work
of hiding London from them had been done thoroughly and well, and that
they might shine on something clean at last! For the blizzard had gone
to an appointment elsewhere, and the few flakes of belated snow that
were afloat had given up all thought of blinding human eyes, and only
seemed to pause in their selection of a resting-place. They had an
_embarras de choix_.
As the sole spectator of the stillness stood looking out into the
night, and thinking Wordsworth to himself, he saw the fixed red eye
of a Cyclops railway-signal through the clear air; snow-scoured, and
innocent, so far, of smoke. All that mighty heart was lying still--yes!
But that engine, idling on the line and wide awake, felt free to wander
to and fro, with clanks, and finally to execute an _arpeggio_ of
truncated snorts downwards, and give a sudden yell, and depart behind
a steam-blast from beneath its apron. Then Mr. Taylor saw distinctly,
at the end of his wrong turning, the fence that stultified it as a
thoroughfare.
A wall of snow was against the lower half of the door, and the whole
row of houses it made one of was nearly masked by the drift-pile
heaped against it; and the snow that had caught and held against every
roughness on the upright wall lay thick on every ledge and slope, and
filled in every cavity. A sense of compromise was abroad in the air--an
anticipated suggestion of a thaw; not yet, you know, but in time!
Athelstan Taylor, as a neighbour's clock struck five in a hurry, knew
so well what the shovels meant to sound like in the morning while all
was still dry; and what the falls of snow would be like from uncleared
roofs later on, when much would be slush.
There was not a soul in sight in the _cul de sac_ street, which had
so obviously been the wrong turning. There was consolation in that,
though, for the Rev. Athelstan, for if it had been Gus and not he, Gus
would have known his ground better, and passed on. But then!--what
might not have happened to that poor little kid, asleep in there?
However, it was necessary now to think what was to be done. Not a
soul in sight, and hardly a sound to be heard; the very murmur of the
city's traffic, that never quite dies, barely audible! Every house
more than ever like its neighbour, in its cloak of snow. Which door
should he choose, to knock at? One opposite looked the most promising,
he thought. But he would put on his greatcoat before crossing through
the cold night air. Where was that coat, by the way? So--back into the
house to get it!
He struck a wax vesta to make the dark passage visible, and soon
saw where the woman had hung it on a peg near the stairway. Should
he, after all, go upstairs and rouse her?--Well, no, on the whole!
Because he thought the woman bad for the patient, and better out of
the way on that account. It did not occur to him that she was in the
adjacent room, and the exploration above contributed as an obstacle to
his decision. He felt readier for a colloquy with a roused next-door
neighbour, than for shaking a stupefied sleeper to wakefulness--one,
too, whom he had very poor reliance on. Besides, his own clearest
scheme was to get some safe person to take charge of the patient, while
he himself went for a doctor. If he did this, the doctor would come. If
he sent, perhaps no! How could he tell?
But after this slight delay, just as well to look in at the sleeper
once more before leaving him! The Rev. Athelstan, feeling very much
like the New Policeman, opened the door cautiously. Just as well, for
his charge was no longer where he had left him. He could see him in the
half-light, blundering against the window-shutter, apparently without
purpose, and talking to himself.
"Everything's took away, by Goard! Now if I could just lay 'ands on
that there * * * knife, I could slit 'em all up. All the biling; and
that'd make me even with 'em! Who's makin' any offer to stop me?" He
muttered on, and there seemed no object in interrupting him. Very
likely he would lie down and doze off again. A few minutes' patience,
anyhow!
Suddenly he stopped and turned. And then perceiving Athelstan Taylor
as he stood by the half-open door watching him intently, he addressed
him exactly as though he were one of a succession of applicants or
customers, whom he had satisfied so far.
"Now who might you be, master? 'And over your job! I'll be answerable
to see to it by to-morrow forenoon." He seemed for the moment quite
composed and businesslike, then suddenly changed to shrewd suspicion.
"Unless you're--unless you're--unless you're.... No!--would you? That's
not playing fair, by Goard! Come--you're a gentleman!--give a beggar
his fair chance...." For a sort of wily approach, as though to somehow
circumvent an object of suspicion, had been promptly intercepted, and
he found himself firmly held as before. Then an intolerable horror
seemed to seize on him quite suddenly. "God's mercy--keep him off--keep
him off! I'll never let on about him to no one. I promise. Only give
me a blooming Testament. I'll swear!" He asked several times for a
Testament, variously described, rather to the amusement than otherwise
of his hearer, whose sense of language discriminated between words with
meanings and expletives without. The drunkard's manner seemed to him
to throw doubt on the validity of any affidavit made on an unstained
volume.
But there was no amusement--nothing but a shudder--to be got out of the
intense conviction of his delirium that there was some horror--some
spectre or nightmare, God knows what!--in ambush behind the man who
held him. Those who have nursed any ordinary fever-patient through the
hours of low vitality in the night, know how hard it is to struggle
against a sort of belief in the reality of his delusions--against the
sympathetic dread, at least, that all but does duty for a real belief.
In _delirium tremens_ this conviction is overwhelming, and the Rev.
Athelstan almost felt it would be an easement, just once, to glance
round behind him, and make sure there was no one else in the room. And
this, although the drunkard's description seemed to apply to a conjurer
(with the usual drawback) who had escaped from his coffin, but might be
got back if we was sharp. His conviction of the reality of this person
was too fervid to be ridiculous, or anything but unearthly; even when
he added, as confirmatory, that he was a Hebrew conjuror, as well as a
sanguinary one. Simon Magus, perhaps?--thought the Rev. Athelstan. And
when he told his friend Gus Fossett of this after, he pretended it had
made him laugh.
The sound of a child crying, surely? Yes--the voice of the little
girl, in an agony of grief or fear, in the next room! He flung the
madman from him, and passed out of the room, locking him in. "I heard
him," said he, afterwards, "begging me to keep Simon Magus off, but
I couldn't stop to see to it." He went into the back room, where
Lizarann, roused by memory of her miseries from the lighter sleep of
morning, was shedding bitter tears because Daddy was not there, but
in the Hospital. Who does not know how the consciousness of affliction
awaiting us will drag us awake, however much we may strive to remain
in dreamland? Lizarann was glad of the gentleman, though, whatever he
was. And it was all the easier for her to give a short abstract of
her tragedy of the night before, that her aunt had gone upstairs to
dress, as a preliminary to action in connection with the front parlour,
whatever it was that was going on there. For whether anyone was there
with her husband--the gentleman of the night before, or a policeman,
or doctor perhaps--she had yet to learn. And she was horribly cold. A
favourable disposition towards lighting a bit of fire in the kitchen
was all the more marked on this account.
The very small person sobbing in a very dirty nightgown in the middle
of the back room could not--so Athelstan Taylor decided--go on
indefinitely unwarmed on such a morning as this. He rejoiced to feel
that there was still plenty of vital heat in her rudiment of a carcass,
as he wrapped it in the first thing that came to hand, a stray relic of
a blanket of days gone by. He picked the little bundle, so compacted,
up on his knee, and helped the subsidence of its sobs with a word or
two of consolation. While doing so, he could hear what difficulties his
case next door was getting into with Simon Magus.
"Berbecause derdaddy's in the Sussospital and hurted his leg," said
Lizarann, as far as our spelling will carry us, in reply to inquiry.
"That's a good little woman! Now she'll tell me all about it. How did
Daddy hurt his leg?"
Lizarann settled down to her narrative. Here was human sympathy, at
last, for her real trouble. For all the dreadful scene of last night
was only Uncle Bob; and of course that sort of thing was always
happening, more or less, with uncles. Not daddies, look you!--that was
quite another pair of shoes.
"There was free spoleecemen," said she, beginning like a true artist
with the strong, conspicuous points of her narrative, "took Daddy along
like carrying a Guy, only the spoleeceman he pictited me up and held me
inside of the skirting for Daddy for to kiss me. And Daddy, he says why
didn't I call out like he told me 'Pi-lot!' so he could hear?..."
"But was Daddy being carried on a chair?" The reference to a Guy had
complicated matters.
"Not a chair to set upon. A hospital-barrer. With skirtings. Yass!
But I hadn't called out Pi-lot, so Daddy could hear...." Lizarann's
conscience torments her on this point, which is one her hearer cares
very little about. He wants to find out what hurt Daddy's leg, and the
extent of the damage. He waits a moment to listen; thinks he hears
a silence in the next room, as though Simon Magus had vanished and
left his victim in peace. Something like knocking about of furniture
follows. But the drunkard is safe locked in. He can do no great harm
for a few minutes anyhow.
"Was it an accident, or did he tumble down of himself?" he asks. He
knows the child will understand. A mere fall on a slippery pavement
would hardly rank as an accident with her. An accident, unclassified
otherwise, almost implies a vehicle, among this class of Londoners.
"Yass!--an accident. The boy said so." A self-explanatory boy, the
speaker seems to think. The hearer accepts him as explained. But what
was the accident, and how much was Daddy hurt? Didn't the boy tell?
Gradually all that Lizarann has to communicate is elicited, and Mr.
Taylor takes a cheerful view of the outlook.
"Then Daddy's gone to the Hospital? They'll set Daddy on his legs
again. What does Daddy do for his living?"
"He's a Asker. Askin', he does. Yass!" Lizarann's large dark eyes, and
her gravity, added force to this. "Every dye, by the Rilewye Stytion,
where I goes to fotch 'im."
Athelstan Taylor gave a low whistle. "Oho!--_that's_ where we are, is
it?" He at once recognised the little girl whose fame had reached him
from the great house at Royd, with which he was of course in frequent
communication. "You're Lizarann Coupland, then; Lady Arkroyd's friend?"
"Yass!" said Lizarann, nodding. Not that she was sure of it. But she
knew there was a Lidy, come to see Teacher at School, she did; and she
couldn't have been certain, off-hand, that this wasn't the Lidy's nime,
in the face of the gentleman's statement. So she assented. She felt
rather proud. Her daddy was well spoken of among the _élite_ evidently.
She continued: "And the boy said, he did, they could mike Daddy's leg
well any day of the week at the Sospital, because they done his Aunt
and Uncle. And a gentleman was a corpse they done, out of a shore. And
Mr. Parker's teef they done, as good as new! So they was all _singin'_!
Yass--they _was_!" This came in instalments; our report is shortened,
for convenience.
Athelstan Taylor said afterwards to his friend: "I was getting so
sleepy by that time, that I didn't above half enjoy the little maid's
hopeful chatter about her Daddy, which of course I confirmed. I had
to commit it to memory to laugh at it afterwards." Indeed, his great
strength and endurance had been sorely taxed by the trying nature of
his long vigil; mere sitting up all night he would have made light of.
* * * * *
When Aunt Stingy appeared a few minutes after, having been employed
in lighting the kitchen fire as projected, she found Lizarann still
on Mr. Taylor's knee, kept warm in the extemporized wrap, and filling
in the blanks in her narrative, in reply to his cross-questionings.
With a curious lack of tact and insight, Mrs. Steptoe immediately
denounced her niece's presumption, suggesting that the child had taken
the gentleman by storm, as it were; and alleging that little g'yells
ought to know better how to behave than that. The gentleman cut this
ill-judged attempt to creep up his sleeve very short indeed.
"Now listen to me, if you please, Mrs. ... what's your name? ...
oh--Steptoe. Mrs. Steptoe. I am going at once to get the nearest doctor
to see your husband. And I think the best thing you can do will be to
leave him quiet in the front room till I come back. He won't take any
harm. And I hope when I come back I shall find the little girl dressed,
with a nice warm fire to warm herself at. I suppose you can't get
any breakfast for her yet awhile?... Well!--do what you can in that
direction. Yesterday's milk is better than no milk." And with a very
decisive refusal to take a cup of tea at any future time, on any terms,
he buttoned his coat tight round him, and left the room. Lizarann heard
the street door open and close, and then she was left friendless and
alone with a formidable aunt. That good woman stepped out after the
street door closed, and listened a moment at that of the front room,
but finding all silent did not open it. She saw it had been locked, as
the key had been inside overnight. Evidently her visitor had locked it.
She returned and afflicted Lizarann by a destructive co-operation in
the gettin' of her frock on, a form of help that twitched its victim
to and fro under the pretext of promoting her stability; that resented
her offered assistance and denounced it as henderin'; that left her
penalized by a sense of wrong hooks in wrong eyes, buttons adrift from
their holes, and holes aghast at the intrusion of strange buttons. But
Lizarann was used to this, and discerned in it the shortness of her
aunt's temper. Her Daddy he'd always said poor Aunty she couldn't help
her nater, and we must bottle up according. Lizarann beheld her aunt
through a halo of Jim's patience and forgiveness.
* * * * *
Athelstan Taylor soon found the doctor in Cazenove Street, who came
readily in answer to his summons. It wouldn't do to lose sight of the
case, he said. The man, who was quite well known to him as a typical
case of Alcoholism, to the police as an habitual drunkard, and to the
neighbourhood as always the worse for liquor, might very easily die
of collapse if he wasn't carefully nourished when the reaction came.
He would be much safer in a Hospital. Often in cases of this sort,
life or death would turn on an injection of morphine on the spot.
Heart-failure might be very rapid. He spoke as though Mr. Steptoe's
decease would be a real calamity. Mr. Taylor, tramping beside him
through the snow, tried to shape a thought that hung in his mind.
How if he himself, who preached a Resurrection or Hereafter that as
like as not this scientific gentleman did not believe in--how if he
was less keen to preserve this depraved life, as a chance to clean
it up a bit for a wholesomer departure later on, than the doctor in
his professional enthusiasm, his sportsmanlike eagerness to win in a
game of Therapeutics against Death? He felt a little ashamed of having
thought more than once that the miserable victim of vice would be
"best out of the way." Out of the way!... where? And then, how did he
know that this consensus of all mortals to try and save even the most
worthless lives may not be an unconscious tribute to the underlying
sense of immortality throughout mankind? Would an honest belief in
extinction fight to preserve a life that is a pain to itself and a
curse to its neighbours? So thinking, he turned with his companion into
Tallack Street. "Last house on the right, isn't it?" said the doctor.
What was that policeman doing in front of the last house on the right?
Looking about on the snow as though in search for something, and then
stooping forward over the low railing to examine the window-fastenings.
It was all secure there when Athelstan Taylor came away. He quickened
his pace, and the doctor did so too.
"Anything wrong, officer?" Both ask the question at once.
"Couldn't say, Sir. Be so good as not to tread on these footmarks. I
want 'em kept till my relief comes. He'll be here in a few minutes....
No--the window's not been tampered with, so far as I see. That's where
it's so queer."
All three stand silent a moment. Then both gentlemen exclaim at once
that they see. The queerness is clear enough to both. The footsteps on
the snow all point away from the window, and a glance shows that there
is no corresponding track of an approach to it.
None of the three seem to think the mystery soluble, for the moment,
and mere speculation is useless. The policeman supplies an additional
fact, but does not claim importance for it. The hasp of the window is
visibly unclosed through the glass. But--so the officer testifies--they
don't shut 'em to, as often as not.
"You can open it from outside," says the parson-gentleman to the
policeman. "All right! I was coming to the house. I know the people."
"All right, officer!" says the doctor-gentleman. "You know me. Dr.
Ferris, Cazenove Street." And thus encouraged the constable easily
throws up the window from without. A touch on the shutters, and they
open inwards. They reveal an empty room, and the track of the footsteps
away from the window is at once explained--fully to the two who knew
that a delirious man was the only tenant of the room, and clearly
enough for purpose of action to the third, who only sees that some
person, to whom the exclamation of both at once, "He has escaped!"
applied, has been able to close the window behind him to disguise his
flight, and may by now be far away at the end of a long trail they
all start to follow, running through the snow as best they may. It is
difficult to run, as the drifted snow is nearly knee-deep sometimes.
But here and there the wind has kept the ground clear, blowing it like
dry dust.
The track goes straight to the closing fence at the street end, at a
point the youthful marauders of Tallack Street have chosen for inroads
into the railway territory beyond. It is passable, for those who can
climb a little, and whose clothes do not mind nail-rip or paint-stain.
As the three follow one another over this obstacle, Athelstan Taylor
and the doctor send back a shouted word or two of reassurance to
whoever it is that has opened the house-door and come out with a cry
of alarm--woman or child or both. They do not stop to see which, but
get on as fast as possible. The track ends for a few yards where
the railway arch has made a gap in the snow, but it is soon found
on the other side, and then is easy to follow over a desolation of
land ripe for building--ripe for the creation of ground-rents--ripe
with the deadly ripeness we all know so well, of the land that the
hay will never smell sweet upon again, the land that even now awaits
interminable streets of dwellings no man or woman of the days to come
shall ever think of as a home in childhood. Easy to follow as it
lies clear in the thick snow it has had all to itself, and will have
till the road is reached that leads to the Refuse Destroyer, with
its two hundred feet of chimney-shaft, from which a black cloud is
pouring--presumably of refuse that has refused to be destroyed; or
has reappeared after destruction in an astral body, or suppose we say
disastral--and the canal, and the Breweries, and the Chemical Bottle
Stout Works, and the Artificial Food Works the Sewage Appropriation
Company, Limited, are building down Snape's Lane this side of the
canal-basin.
The track goes straight to the road, but on reaching it swerves aside,
baffled by a hedge, or the memory of what was once a hedge, whose
function has been reinforced by barbed wire; probably the last expiring
effort of a pastoral age to induce sheep to remain on the land and
be tempted by the dirty grass. The swerved footsteps follow on to an
opening two sad stumps face one another in, and think, perhaps, at
times of the days when they were a stile, and real villagers stepped
over them, and distant London was unknown. Then the track is lost for a
space in a maze of other tracks of men on their way to brew, to bottle
stout chemically, to appropriate sewage, that artificial food may be
stocked, in tins, for a race with powers of digestion up to date. Then
is found again, and followed on to a canal-bank with Platonic locks
that sleep sometimes from day's end to day's end, bargeless, and dream
of a past when railways were unknown, and they were full of purpose,
and the world was young. And then is lost again, at a bridge.
Stragglers are gathering round, anxious to satisfy curiosity about
the nature of the search; also anxious to impart information about
its object, whether possessed of any or not. Willingness to further
the public interest, without any qualifications of data to go upon,
is often a serious hindrance to the end in view. In this case several
casuals, who have _not_ seen a man in his shirt-sleeves, without ne'er
a hat on, go by, are so anxious to mould the particulars of something
else they _have_ seen into a plausible substitute for information
about the said man, that the necessity for hearing enough of their
evidence to reject it becomes an obstacle trying to the patience of the
searchers. It seems injudicious to snub a volunteer informant who see
a party go along the road in the opposite direction rather better than
an hour ago, with a sack over his head and shoulders, who "might have
been a dorg-fancier, to look at, in the manner of describing him," and
to tell him to shut up if he can't go any nearer than that; not only
because this drastic treatment may discourage other informants who
have really something to tell, but because, being put on his mettle,
he proceeds to adjust his evidence to the facts, so far as he can
ascertain them. He removes the sack from the head of his recollection,
makes it walk the other way at any acceptable time; won't undertake,
now you ask so partic'lar, that it hadn't shirt-sleeves, and surrenders
the dog-fancier in favour of any vocation you are inclined to put a
leading question about. In like manner, a party sim'lar to you describe
come straight--according to other proffered testimony--acrost yarnder
open ground to this very self-same spot, and so forrard over the bridge
to'ards the Princess Charlotte down the lane, and went in at the bar.
But the photographic likeness of this person to any description you
choose to give of the man sought for fails to establish the identity of
the two, as he was seen on the previous day, maybe about dinner-time.
Compromise is impossible; the informant stands committed to yesterday,
past recall.
But the track on the snow is lost--that is the one fact clear. Give
it up and go back?--is that the only course open to us? Not when the
chase ends so close to a canal-lock. True, the footsteps do not go to
the edge, but only because a wind-swept skirting of brick pavement is
clear of snow. The last one is none so far off the stone curb, above
the water. Look down into the empty lock, and think!
The parson and the doctor represent intelligent speculation; the
policeman, official reserve ready to listen to information and compare
it with his pre-omniscience; the gathering crowd of early workmen, the
uselessness of defective reasoning powers brought to bear on insoluble
problems.
After a moment the parson speaks to the doctor: "The ice is broken over
there--just where the water is running in."
"Are you sure?" asks the doctor. "Isn't it only the wash of the water
melting it off? But your eyesight is better than mine, I expect."
"No, there's a broken edge. The water-wash would scoop and leave a
curve."
"What do _you_ think?" the doctor asks the policeman, who replies
briefly: "Gentleman's right, perhaps. Worth trying, anyhow!...
Now then, some of you, idling round, I want that bit of ice broke
up--against the lower gate. Look alive now!... Yes!--a couple of planks
and a short ladder and a yard or so of scaffold-cord. Get 'em anywhere
round! I'm answerable. Never you mind what anyone says--just you take
'em!" And the leading casuals, probably labourers on the building job
down the lane, are off at a trot to requisition planks and cords. But
not without establishing a slight collateral grievance, in the manner
of their kind: "You've only got to _name_ what you want, and we'll
_get_ it fast enough. Who's to know what you're askin' for, exceptin'
you speak?"
Athelstan Taylor's surmise of course was that Uncle Bob had ended his
run by falling into the lock at the upper end, where the ice was thin;
and, breaking through it, had passed below the thicker ice, where he
remained--probably jammed against the lower gate, which was closed. He
noticed that this conjecture was at once accepted, but that no living
soul of all those present referred to it in words. Silence is kept
about it, but for a word between himself and the doctor, even till
after the planks and cords and ladder have come, and the planks are
laid athwart the sounder ice at the lower gate. One man can stand on
them safely without fear of its giving--perhaps two. But one can break
the ice with a pick fast enough, as soon as he can get at it. Hand him
down a shovel to clear the snow a bit!
The parson is feeling sick at heart with his long night's vigil, and
as though he could hardly face the dreadful end. He shrinks back, not
to see more than he need. Then from the depths of the lock comes the
crackling sound of the ice that breaks beneath the pick. Then the
tension of the growing excitement as those on the brink watch for a
result they feel confident of.
"Nothing there?"... "Nothing that side."... "Now you keep steady
across with your peck--right you are!--across the middle ... don't go
to sleep!... yes, now right up in the corner.... Something there?"...
"Ah!--easy a minute till I catch holt ... have that cord ready.... Got
him?"
* * * * *
"You are quite certain nothing can be done?"
"Absolutely certain. He was ready for heart-failure, without being an
hour under the ice."
"Will you tell the poor woman, from me, that I had no choice but to go?
And that poor baby...."
"Is there a baby?"
"Well--little girl of six then! Say I'll come at three to take her to
see her father at the Hospital. You're sure it's the same case?"
"Not the least doubt. A blind sailor beggar--there couldn't be two. You
know the wards at St. Brides.... Never mind--you'll find out.... What
is it, my good woman?"
It is a woman with a tale to tell. Briefly, that she looked out of
her bedroom window about an hour and a half since, and saw what must
have been the unhappy inebriate running across the field, looking
back, time and again, as if he see some party follering of him. Then
he come to the lock, and stood close over the edge--back to, as you
might say. So standing, he went wild, on the sudden, and threw up his
arms, and there!--he was over in the lock, afore you could reckin
him up like--clear over! Both her hearers are indignant, or perhaps
incredulous about the truth of the story. For if she really saw this,
why in Heaven's name did she give no alarm?--the man's life might have
been saved! She expresses contrition as for an error of judgment, but
no great remorse. She told her master--meaning her husband--who said
it was a queer start. But it was that early! The exact bearing of this
fact on the matter was far from clear.
"She'll have to tell her tale before the coroner, anyhow," said the
doctor, as he showed his companion a short-cut into his road home.
"Well!--now keep straight on--you'll be in the main road in five
minutes. I hope you'll get a good breakfast and a good sleep before you
marry those two sinners. Good-bye! Remember, straight on!"
For the Rev. Athelstan had told this gentleman of the binding
engagement that he had to keep that morning as _locum tenens_ at St.
Vulgate's. He had with difficulty persuaded a navvy to remedy an
omission in his duties towards the mother of his family, whom he had
never led to the Altar of Hymen; and the said navvy had consented to do
so this morning, and was rather entering into the fun of the thing. But
if the parson were to fail in his appointment, was it certain that the
delinquent would be brought to the scratch a second time?
However, he had still time for breakfast and rest before this
appointment was due. So he walked briskly on through the thick snow,
sad at heart, but wonderfully little the worse physically for his
terrible experience. And as he walked he shuddered as he thought of the
unhappy case of Alcoholism, flying over the spotless, virgin snow from
God knows what, to his death. "I suppose Simon Magus had got out, after
all, and was sharp on his heels," said the Rev. Athelstan, and then
added: "At any rate, I'm glad it was me, not Gus!"