Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-03-24
THE MISADVENTURES
OF JOHN NICHOLSON.
CHAPTER YIl-CoNrINuEp.

plunged In Jne DlackneSS OF despair
that neighbored on Inconsistencies,
the driver on the box digesting his
rebuke and his customers duplicity.
/ would not be thought to put the
pair in competition. Johns case was
out of all parallel. But the cabman,
too, is worth the sympathy of the ju
dicious, for he was fellow of genu-
inc kindliness and high sense of
personal dignity incensed by drink;
and his advances had been cruelty
and publicly rebuifed. AS he drove,
therefore, he counted his wrongs, and
thirsted for sympathy and drink.
Now, it CHANGED that he had a friend,
a publican in Queensferry street,
from whom, in view of the sacredness
of the occasion, he thought he might
extract dram. Queensferry street
lies something off the direct road to
Murrayfeld. But then there is the
billy crossroad that passes by the
valley of the Leith and the Dean Gem
etery; and Queensferry street is on
the way TO that. What was to him
der the cabman, since his horse was
dumb. from choosing the crossroad,
and calling on his friend in passing?
So it was decided: and the charioteer
already somewhat Modified, turned
aside his horse TO the right.
John, meanwhile, sat collapsed, his
chin sunk upon his chest, his mind in
allegiance. The smell of the cab was
still faulty present TO his senses, and
a certain leaden chill about his feet;
all else had disappeared in one vass
oppression of calamity and physical
faintness. 1t 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 in at IL Q
window, his attention had TO b.
recalled from depths of vacancy.
IF you'll no stand me dram"said
the driver, with a well-merited Sc
verify of tone and manner, Il dare
say you'll have no objection to my
taking one myself"
"Yes-no-do what you like" re-
turned John; and then as he watched
his tormentor mount the stairs and
enter the whiskey shop there Aoated
into his mind sense of something
long ago familiar. At that he start
ed 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 treetops of
the rookery in Randolph Crescent. He
was close to Monochrome, where he
had thought at that hour to be sitting
in the well-remembered drawing-room
In friendly converse; and, instead
1t 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 both reviewed the
affairs Of the nation; so he still sat
when his master condescended to re-
turn and drive off at last down hill,
along the curve of Lynedoch Place; but
even so sitting, as he passed the end of
his fathers street, he took one glance
from between shielding fingers and be-
hold doctors carriage at the door.
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 lead
ing citizens, with the proper trappings
and attendance of the end. And now, in
that frosty, ill-smelling straw-carpeted
and rag-cushioned cab, with his breath
congealing on the glasses, where else
was John notwithstanding to?
The thought stirred his magma
tion, which began to manufacture
many thousand pictures, bright and
feeting, like the shapes in kaleido-
scope; and now he saw himself rudy
and comforted, sliding in the gutter;
and, again, little woe-begone, bored
urchin tricked forth in Grape and
weepers, descending this same hill
at the foot's-pace of mourning coaches
his mothers 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 O sudden change, thtonged about
with white-faced, manipulating
neighbors, and doctors bursting
through their midst and fixing his
stethescope as he went, the police
man shaking a sagacious head beside
the body. 1t 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 up
on his shoulder. Heavens! how he
wished he had played the manlier
part; how he despised himself that
he had fed that fatal neighborhood
when all was quiet, and now should
be travelling tamely back when 1t was
th-onging with avengers!
ANY strong degree Of passion LENDS