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how? Long since, he thought; and then, casting his eye
through the front glass, which had been recently occluded by
the figure of the jarvey, he beheld the tree-tops of the
rookery in Randolph Crescent. He was close to home - home,
where he had thought, at that hour, to be sitting in the
well-remembered drawing-room in friendly converse; and,
instead - !
It was his first impulse to drop into the bottom of the cab;
his next, to cover his face with his hands. So he sat, while
the cabman toasted the publican, and the publican toasted the
cabman, and both reviewed the affairs of the nation; so he
still sat, when his master condescended to return, and drive
off at last down-hill, along the curve of Lynedoch Place; but
even so sitting, as he passed the end of his father's street,
he took one glance from between shielding fingers, and beheld
a doctor's carriage at the door.
'Well, just so,' thought he; 'I'll have killed my father!
And this is Christmas-day!'
If Mr. Nicholson died, it was down this same road he must
journey to the grave; and down this road, on the same errand,
his wife had preceded him years before; and many other
leading citizens, with the proper trappings and attendance of
the end. And now, in that frosty, ill-smelling, straw-
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