Could it be? Did he still dream? While he stood panting and staring
at the building the city clocks began to strike. Eleven o'clock; it
was ten when he came away; how he must have driven! His thoughts caught
up the word. Driven,--by what? Driven from his house in horror, through
street and lane, over half the city,--driven,--hunted in terror, and
smitten by a shock here! Driven,--driven! He could not rid his mind
of the word, nor of the meaning it suggested. The pavements about him
began to ring and echo with the tramp of many feet, and the cold, brittle
air was shivered with the noisy voices that had roared and bawled
applause and laughter at the National Theatre all the evening, and were
now singing and howling homeward. Groups of rude men, and ruder boys,
their breaths steaming in the icy air, began to tramp by, jostling him
as they passed, till he was forced to draw back to the wall, and give
them the sidewalk. Dazed and giddy, in cold fear, and with the returning
sense of something near him, he stood and watched the groups that pushed
and tumbled in through the entrance of the oyster-room, whistling and
chattering as they went, and banging the door behind them.
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