The Professor had turned into a street to the left, and walked along, with his head carried rigidly erect, in a crowd whose every individual almost overtopped his stunted stature.

It was vain to pretend to himself that he was not disappointed.

But that was mere feeling; the stoicism of his thought could not be disturbed by this or any other failure.

Next time, or the time after next, a telling stroke would be delivered-something really startling--a blow fit to open the first crack in the imposing front of the great edifice of legal conceptions sheltering the atrocious injustice of society.

Of humble origin, and with an appearance really so mean as to stand in the way of his considerable natural abilities, his imagination had been fired early by the tales of men rising from the depths of poverty to positions of authority and affluence.