"Madman! Madman!"
Looking up wildly he found himself, to his horror, a third time in the street of his persecutors. This time the hilarity descended on him like a storm, for humanity is pitiless once its sense of ridicule is touched. From the windows women saluted him with gibes and laughter, people crowded to the front of the shops showing him to one another, while the loungers cheered on the ragamuffins who, forming in a company behind him, chanted in unison:
"Mad dog! Mad dog!"
Some one from a window pelted him with an apple. At this moment he was in danger of losing his reason. He began frantically to run, his tormentors with shrieks of delight pursuing him. After two blocks of fruitless flight he turned suddenly on the pack about his heels and clubbed the foremost with such fury that the rest fled. Then forgetting everything but the new fear of the something within his mind which was beginning to snap, he rushed over to the west side, crossing Broadway by a miracle. All at once he heard his name pronounced. A familiar voice was saying conciliatingly:
"Oh, Mr. Fargus, do come in! What has happened to you?"
He came to a halt, stock still, and glared about him. Some strange instinct had led him back to the scenes of his boyhood. He was before the sunken rooms of Nell's Coffee House, and Mrs. Biggs herself was watching him with fear and wonder.
"What, you too!" he cried, and whipped into fury by the sight of his first love he brandished his cane and rushed on her. The woman, with a cry, flung into the restaurant and barricaded the door.
Then a chill began to shake him, his arm fell inertly, his rage, from utter exhaustion, passed like a fever from him. He turned away and instinctively took up the familiar journey to his old home in the tenements.
"Ah, let me think," he said wearily, striking his damp forehead. The perfidy of Bofinger he had guessed from the first words of his wife. He gradually comprehended what had happened, that the lawyer had gone straight to Sheila and with her had formed a compact which had made her his wife. If the details were obscure the truth was blinding. When he had thought this carefully out he said again: