And Warburton, brooding on this matter, stood appalled at the ferocity of the struggle amid which he lived, in which he had his part.  Gone was all his old enjoyment of the streets of London.  In looking back upon his mood of that earlier day, he saw himself as an incredibly ignorant and careless man; marvelled at the lightness of heart which had enabled him to find amusement in rambling over this vast slaughter-strewn field of battle.  Picturesque, forsooth!  Where was its picturesqueness for that struggling, soon-to-be-defeated tradesman, with his tipsy wife, and band of children who looked to him for bread?  “And I myself am crushing the man—­as surely as if I had my hand on his gullet and my knee on his chest!  Crush him I must; otherwise, what becomes of that little home down at St. Neots —­dear to me as his children are to him.  There’s no room for both of us; he has come too near; he must pay the penalty of his miscalculation.  Is there not the workhouse for such people?” And Will went about repeating to himself.  “There’s the workhouse—­ don’t I pay poor-rates?—­the workhouse is an admirable institution.”

He lay awake many an hour of these winter nights, seeing in vision his own life and the life of man.  He remembered the office in Little Ailie Street; saw himself and Godfrey Sherwood sitting together, talking, laughing, making a jest of their effort to support a doomed house.  Godfrey used to repeat legends, sagas, stories of travel, as though existence had not a care, or the possibility of one; and he, in turn, talked about some bit of London he had been exploring, showed an old map he had picked up, an old volume of London topography.  The while, world-wide forces, the hunger-struggle of nations, were shaking the roof above their heads.  Theoretically they knew it.  But they could escape in time; they had a cosy little corner preserved for themselves, safe from these pestilent worries.  Fate has a grudge against the foolishly secure.  If he laughed now, it was in self-mockery.

The night of London, always rife with mysterious sounds, spoke dreadfully to his straining ear.  He heard voices near and far, cries of pain or of misery, shouts savage or bestial; over and through all, that low, far-off rumble or roar, which never for a moment ceases, the groan, as it seemed, of suffering multitudes.  There tripped before his dreaming eyes a procession from the world of wealth and pleasure, and the amazement with which he viewed it changed of a sudden to fiery wrath; he tossed upon the bed, uttered his rage in a loud exclamation, felt his heart pierced with misery which brought him all but to tears.  Close upon astonishment and indignation followed dread.  Given health and strength, he might perhaps continue to hold his own in this merciless conflict; perhaps, only; but what if some accident, such as befalls this man or that in every moment of time, threw him among the weaklings?  He saw his mother, in her age and ill-health, reduced to the pittance of the poorest; his sister going forth to earn her living; himself, a helpless burden upon both.—­Nay, was there not rat-poison to be purchased?