than any I had seen.  His scanty clothes seemed singed and burned into rags; his hair, which hung about his face unkempt and uncared for, had the same singed aspect; his skin was brown and baked.  I got up as he approached, and caught him and threw him to the ground, without heeding his struggles to get on.  ‘Don’t you see,’ he cried with a gasp, ‘they may get me again.’  He was one of those who had escaped out of the mines; but what was it to me whether they caught him again or not?  I wanted to know how he had been caught, and what he had been set to do, and how he had escaped.  Why should I hesitate to use my superior strength when no one else did?  I kept watch over him that he should not get away.

‘You have been in the mines?’ I said.

‘Let me go!’ he cried.  ‘Do you need to ask?’ and he cursed me as he struggled, with the most terrible imprecations.  ’They may get me yet.  Let me go!’

‘Not till you tell me,’ I cried.  ’Tell me and I’ll protect you.  If they come near I’ll let you go.  Who are they, man?  I must know.’

He struggled up from the ground, clearing his hot eyes from the ashes that were in them, and putting aside his singed hair.  He gave me a glance of hatred and impotent resistance (for I was stronger than he), and then cast a wild terrified look back.  The skirmishers did not seem to remark that anybody had escaped, and he became gradually a little more composed.  ‘Who are they?’ he said hoarsely.  ’They’re cursed wretches like you and me; and there are as many bands of them as there are mines on the road; and you’d better turn back and stay where you are.  You are safe here.’

‘I will not turn back,’ I said.

’I know well enough:  you can’t.  You’ve got to go the round like the rest,’ he said with a laugh which was like a sound uttered by a wild animal rather than a human voice.  The man was in my power, and I struck him, miserable as he was.  It seemed a relief thus to get rid of some of the fury in my mind.  ‘It’s a lie,’ I said; ’I go because I please.  Why shouldn’t I gather a band of my own if I please, and fight those brutes, not fly from them like you?’

He chuckled and laughed below his breath, struggling and cursing and crying out, as I struck him again, ’You gather a band!  What could you offer them?  Where would you find them?  Are you better than the rest of us?  Are you not a man like the rest?  Strike me you can, for I’m down.  But make yourself a master and a chief—­you!’

‘Why not I?’ I shouted again, wild with rage and the sense that I had no power over him, save to hurt him.  That passion made my hands tremble; he slipped from me in a moment, bounded from the ground like a ball, and with a yell of derision escaped, and plunged into the streets and the clamor of the city from which I had just flown.  I felt myself rage after him, shaking my fists with a consciousness of the ridiculous passion of impotence that was in me, but no power of restraining it; and there was