Robert Stonehouse stood back against the shuttered windows of a shop and stared at him.  The sea, rushing out in some monstrous tidal wave had left its floor littered with old wreckage, with dead, forgotten people who stirred and lifted themselves.  A grotesque, private resurrection. . . .

The crowd around Mr. Ricardo listened in silence, not mocking him.  There were wide-eyed, haunted-looking children, and men and women not quite sober who drifted out from the public-houses to gape heavily at this cheaper form of entertainment.  Possibly they thought he was some missionary trying to induce them to sign the pledge.  Some of them must have known that he was mad.  But even they did not laugh at him.  Into their own dark and formless thoughts there may have come the dim realization that they, too, were misshapen and outcast.  The rain falling in long, slanting lines through the dingy lamplight seemed to merge them into a mournful kinship.

He spoke rapidly, and for the most part the long, involved sentences rolled themselves without meaning.  But now and then something struggled clear—­a familiar phrase—­an ironical echo.  Then Robert Stonehouse saw through the disfigurement to the man that had been—­the poor maimed and shackled fighter gibing and leering at his fellow-prisoners.

“And now, my delightful and learned young friends——­”

And yet he had stood up for little Robert Stonehouse in those days—­had armed him, and opened doors, and made himself into a stepping-stone to the freedom he had never known.  And had gone under. . . .

“That is all for tonight, men and women.  I thank you for your support.  You may rest assured that the fight will go on.  The end is in sight, and if need be I shall lead the last attack in person.”

Then he stepped down from his soap-box and swung it on to his shoulders by means of a cord, and went limping off in a strange and anxious haste.

Stonehouse pushed roughly through the dispersing, purposeless crowd and caught up with him as he was about to lose himself in a dark network of little squalid streets.  He felt oddly young and diffident, for the schoolmaster is always the schoolmaster though he be mad and broken.

“Mr. Ricardo—­don’t you remember me?”

The old man stopped and blinked up uncertainly from under the sodden brim of his hat.  His dirty claw-like hands clutched his coat together in an instinctive gesture of concealment.  He seemed disturbed and even rather offended at the interruption.

“I—­ah—­I beg your pardon.  No, I’m afraid not.  It is—­ah—­not unnatural.  You understand—­I have too many supporters.”

“Yes—­yes—­of course.  But you knew me years ago when I was a boy.  Don’t you remember Robert Stonehouse?”

It was evident that the name fanned some faint memory which flickered up for a moment and then went out.

“You will excuse me.  It is possible.  I have heard the name.  But I have long since ceased to concern myself with persons.  In a great struggle such as this individuals are submerged.”