“This the place?  Thanks; I’ll get out.”

He looked at the half-crown, smiled, and handed it to the cabman.

In a few minutes he stood before an ugly but decent house, which had a card in the window intimating that lodgings were here to let.  His knock brought a woman to the door.

“I think Mr. North lives here?”

“Yes, sir, he do live yere,” the woman answered, in a simple tone.  “Would you wish for to see him?”

“Please ask him if he could see a gentleman on business—­Mr. Marks.”

“But he ben’t in, sir, not just now.  He”——­she broke off and pointed up the street.  “Why, there he come, I declare!”

“The tall man?”

“That be he, sir.”

Glazzard moved towards the person indicated, a man of perhaps thirty, with a good figure, a thin, sallow face, clean-shaven, and in rather shabby clothes.  He went close up to him and said gravely: 

“Mr. North, I have just called to see you on business.”

The young man suppressed a movement of uneasiness, drew in his lank cheeks, and looked steadily at the speaker.

“What name?” he asked, curtly, with the accent which represents some degree of liberal education.

“Mr. Marks.  I should like to speak to you in private.”

“Has any one sent you?”

“No, I have taken the trouble to find where you were living.  It’s purely my own affair.  I think it will be to your interest to talk with me.”

The other still eyed him suspiciously, but did not resist.

“I haven’t a sitting-room,” he said, “and we can’t talk here.  We can walk on a little, if you like.”

“I’m a stranger.  Is there a quiet spot anywhere about here?”

“If we jump on this omnibus that’s coming, it’ll take us to the Suspension Bridge—­Clifton, you know.  Plenty of quiet spots about there.”

The suggestion was accepted.  On the omnibus they conversed as any casual acquaintances might have done.  Glazzard occasionally inspected his companion’s features, which were not vulgar, yet not pleasing.  The young man had a habit of sucking in his cheeks, and of half closing his eyes as if he suffered from weak sight; his limbs twitched now and then, and he constantly fingered his throat.

“A fine view,” remarked Glazzard, as they came near to the great cliffs; “but the bridge spoils it, of course.”

“Do you think so?  Not to my mind.  I always welcome the signs of civilization.”

Glazzard looked at him with curiosity, and the speaker threw back his head in a self-conscious, conceited way.

“Picturesqueness is all very well,” he added, “but it very often means hardships to human beings.  I don’t ask whether a country looks beautiful, but what it does for the inhabitants.”

“Very right and proper,” assented Glazzard, with a curl of the lip.

“I know very well,” pursued the moralist, “that civilization doesn’t necessarily mean benefit to the class which ought to be considered first.  But that’s another question.  It ought to benefit them, and eventually it must.”