long, and underneath, "Professor Higginson says 'Yes,'" almost knocked him down as they stared at him from one hoarding. In the loud bill outside a chapel he saw his name set forth as the "subject of the discourse," and before he could snatch away his eyes he had caught the phrase: "The First Witness." All were welcome. … He was the First Witness! … Oh, God!
He could not pursue his walk. He felt (quite unnecessarily) that the mass of the people whom he passed noted him, and spoke of him among themselves as the Author of the Great Revelation. He wished again for the hundredth time that he had never meddled with a lie. Then Satan jerked the bit: Professor Higginson remembered what the truth would have brought him; he thought of the dock. And then he ceased to wish for anything at all.
Just as he was turning back from that via dolorosa of newspaper placards and sermon-notices in the public street, he remembered the mass of correspondence, and at that moment Heaven sent him a friend—it was Babcock. The set face and hard, bepuffed eyes seemed to shine on him like a light of doom; the great loose mouth seemed eager
