“Are you going in?” he said sharply.

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I shall not,” said Waymark.  “I’ll go to your place, and wait there.”

But when Abraham, whose eyes had not moved from the prisoner throughout the proceedings, rose at length to leave, a step or two brought him to a man who was leaning against the wall, powerless from conflicting excitement, and deadly pale.  It was Waymark.  Mr. Woodstock took him by the arm and led him out.

“Why couldn’t you keep away?” the old man exclaimed hoarsely, and with more of age in his voice than any one had ever yet heard in it.

Waymark shook himself free, and laughed as one laughs under torment.

CHAPTER XXV

ART AND MISERY

One Monday afternoon at the end of October—­three months had gone by since the trial—­Waymark carried his rents to St. John Street Road as usual.

“I’m going to Tottenham,” said Mr. Woodstock.  “You may as well come with me.”

“By the by, I finished my novel the other day,” Waymark said, as they drove northward.

“That’s right.  No doubt you’re on your way to glory, as the hymn says.”

Abraham was in good spirits.  One would have said that he had grown younger of late.  That heaviness and tendency to absent brooding which not long ago seemed to indicate the tightening grip of age, was disappearing; he was once more active and loud and full of his old interests.

“How’s Casti?” Mr. Woodstock went on to ask.

“A good deal better, I think, but shaky.  Of course things will be as bad as ever when his wife comes out of the hospital.”

“Pity she can’t come out heels first,” muttered Abraham.

Waymark found that the purpose of their journey was to inspect a large vacant house, with a good garden and some fine trees about it.  The old man wished for his opinion, and, by degrees, let it be known that he thought of buying the property.

“I suppose you think me an old fool to want a house like this at my time of life, eh?”

There was a twinkle in his eye, and a moment after he fairly burst into a laugh of pleasure.  Waymark asked no questions, and received no more information; but a thought rose in his mind which occupied him for the rest of the day.

In the evening Julian came.  He looked like one who had recovered from a long illness, very pale and thin, and his voice had tremblings and uncertainties of key.  In fact, a feverish disorder had been upon him for some weeks, never severe enough to prevent his getting about, but weakening him to a serious degree.  It would doubtless have developed into some more pronounced illness, but for the period of comparative rest and quietness which had begun shortly after the miseries of the trial.  Harriet’s ailments had all at once taken such a decided turn for the worse—­her fits becoming incessant,