‘Down you shall come, you great big, ugly brute!’ cried Morris aloud, with something of that passion which swept the Parisian mob against the walls of the Bastille.  ’Down you shall come, this night.  I’ll have none of you in my lobby.’

The face, from its indecent expression, had particularly animated the zeal of our iconoclast; and it was against the face that he began his operations.  The great height of the demigod—­for he stood a fathom and half in his stocking-feet—­offered a preliminary obstacle to this attack.  But here, in the first skirmish of the battle, intellect already began to triumph over matter.  By means of a pair of library steps, the injured householder gained a posture of advantage; and, with great swipes of the coal-axe, proceeded to decapitate the brute.

Two hours later, what had been the erect image of a gigantic coal-porter turned miraculously white, was now no more than a medley of disjected members; the quadragenarian torso prone against the pedestal; the lascivious countenance leering down the kitchen stair; the legs, the arms, the hands, and even the fingers, scattered broadcast on the lobby floor.  Half an hour more, and all the debris had been laboriously carted to the kitchen; and Morris, with a gentle sentiment of triumph, looked round upon the scene of his achievements.  Yes, he could deny all knowledge of it now:  the lobby, beyond the fact that it was partly ruinous, betrayed no trace of the passage of Hercules.  But it was a weary Morris that crept up to bed; his arms and shoulders ached, the palms of his hands burned from the rough kisses of the coal-axe, and there was one smarting finger that stole continually to his mouth.  Sleep long delayed to visit the dilapidated hero, and with the first peep of day it had again deserted him.

The morning, as though to accord with his disastrous fortunes, dawned inclemently.  An easterly gale was shouting in the streets; flaws of rain angrily assailed the windows; and as Morris dressed, the draught from the fireplace vividly played about his legs.

‘I think,’ he could not help observing bitterly, ’that with all I have to bear, they might have given me decent weather.’

There was no bread in the house, for Miss Hazeltine (like all women left to themselves) had subsisted entirely upon cake.  But some of this was found, and (along with what the poets call a glass of fair, cold water) made up a semblance of a morning meal, and then down he sat undauntedly to his delicate task.

Nothing can be more interesting than the study of signatures, written (as they are) before meals and after, during indigestion and intoxication; written when the signer is trembling for the life of his child or has come from winning the Derby, in his lawyer’s office, or under the bright eyes of his sweetheart.  To the vulgar, these seem never the same; but to the expert, the bank clerk, or the lithographer, they are constant quantities, and as recognizable as the North Star to the night-watch on deck.