I was conscious as I left the house that it was a clear and pleasant evening, and that the sky was peopled with many stars. At the foot of the steps I paused and looked about me. It was not my intention to go straight to Little Olive Street, but to spend that night, and probably the following day, in transacting certain little business matters of my own. As I stood there, my feelings were those of the boy who quits, for ever, a hated school. A whimsical mood came over me. Wheeling round, I shook my fist at the door, which had just been closed.
'I hope I'll never come through you again. The Marquis slips his skin!'
Turning, I moved along the pavement. I hadn't gone a dozen yards when I came upon a man who advanced from the direction in which I was going. At sight, each, on the instant, recognised the other. We both stopped dead.
It was my double--the man with a tongue whom I had seem at M'Croskay's in San Francisco. His lordship's very own self. Simon Pure.
[BOOK IV.--THE SINNER]
THE AUTHOR THROWS LIGHT UPON AN
INTERESTING SITUATION
CHAPTER XXIX
[BACK TO THE WORLD]
The monks were working in the garden. A little apart, a man, whose costume suggested that he had not yet taken the full monastic vows, was going over a patch of ground with a rake. The patch was on a slope. Here and there were currant-bushes. The rake loosened the soil which was between them. Presently the man came to a piece of printed paper, which apparently had been carried by the wind till it found lodgment against a bush. He picked it up. It was part of a page of an English newspaper, left, probably, by some sight-seeing Englishman, who, mindful of the things which in that part of the world one ought to do, had tasted of the monastic hospitality. The finder, glancing at what he held, was about to crumple it up and throw it from him, when his eye was caught by the heading of a paragraph--'Death of the Marquis of Twickenham.'
When he perceived the words, for a moment his purpose was postponed. He stared as if they conveyed to his mind something which filled him with amazement. Then, remembering where he was, and looking about him to see if he was observed, he crushed the piece of paper into a pellet, which he placed within his cassock. Then he continued to rake as if nothing had happened.