‘Then there’s another thing,’ he resumed; ’can I?  Am I able?  Why didn’t I practise different handwritings while I was young?  How a fellow regrets those lost opportunities when he grows up!  But there’s one comfort:  it’s not morally wrong; I can try it on with a clear conscience, and even if I was found out, I wouldn’t greatly care—­morally, I mean.  And then, if I succeed, and if Pitman is staunch, there’s nothing to do but find a venal doctor; and that ought to be simple enough in a place like London.  By all accounts the town’s alive with them.  It wouldn’t do, of course, to advertise for a corrupt physician; that would be impolitic.  No, I suppose a fellow has simply to spot along the streets for a red lamp and herbs in the window, and then you go in and—­and—­and put it to him plainly; though it seems a delicate step.’

He was near home now, after many devious wanderings, and turned up John Street.  As he thrust his latchkey in the lock, another mortifying reflection struck him to the heart.

‘Not even this house is mine till I can prove him dead,’ he snarled, and slammed the door behind him so that the windows in the attic rattled.

Night had long fallen; long ago the lamps and the shop-fronts had begun to glitter down the endless streets; the lobby was pitch—­dark; and, as the devil would have it, Morris barked his shins and sprawled all his length over the pedestal of Hercules.  The pain was sharp; his temper was already thoroughly undermined; by a last misfortune his hand closed on the hammer as he fell; and, in a spasm of childish irritation, he turned and struck at the offending statue.  There was a splintering crash.

‘O Lord, what have I done next?’ wailed Morris; and he groped his way to find a candle.  ‘Yes,’ he reflected, as he stood with the light in his hand and looked upon the mutilated leg, from which about a pound of muscle was detached.  ’Yes, I have destroyed a genuine antique; I may be in for thousands!’ And then there sprung up in his bosom a sort of angry hope.  ‘Let me see,’ he thought.  ’Julia’s got rid of—­, there’s nothing to connect me with that beast Forsyth; the men were all drunk, and (what’s better) they’ve been all discharged.  O, come, I think this is another case of moral courage!  I’ll deny all knowledge of the thing.’

A moment more, and he stood again before the Hercules, his lips sternly compressed, the coal-axe and the meat-cleaver under his arm.  The next, he had fallen upon the packing-case.  This had been already seriously undermined by the operations of Gideon; a few well-directed blows, and it already quaked and gaped; yet a few more, and it fell about Morris in a shower of boards followed by an avalanche of straw.

And now the leather-merchant could behold the nature of his task:  and at the first sight his spirit quailed.  It was, indeed, no more ambitious a task for De Lesseps, with all his men and horses, to attack the hills of Panama, than for a single, slim young gentleman, with no previous experience of labour in a quarry, to measure himself against that bloated monster on his pedestal.  And yet the pair were well encountered:  on the one side, bulk—­on the other, genuine heroic fire.