Comethup gazed blankly through the window, the panes of which were of old and common glass that distorted everything seen through them. He shook his head, and looked round at the old man. "Nothing," he said, "only the houses, and the church spire at the end of the street."
The shoemaker shook him gently but impatiently. "Look again," he whispered; "move your head from side to side, as I move it--so. See the houses leap and jump and tremble; see the spire of the church double up like a reed, and seem as if it would plunge down into the street. Again--move your head again--see how they leap and tremble and fall!"
Comethup, a little frightened, moved his head, and then laughed faintly. "But it's only the glass," he said.
"Ah, but a man may sit here--a man poor and humble and with no power--and yet dream that he has the power so to sweep away those who have wronged him; to bring their fine houses tumbling about their ears, like things built of cards. Boy, I tell you if a man can dream that, he is stronger and greater than those who have the power to build--eh?"
Comethup obediently said, "Yes, I suppose so," and the old man laughed, and took up his work and fell to hammering. Comethup, after he reached home, tried the plan with other windows, and trembled a little when he remembered the fierce whisper in which the old man had spoken; he wondered, too, why he should carry in his breast the desire to injure any one, or to wreck what he had built. Meanwhile, Brian had to be reckoned with; it was impossible to ignore him completely, and the hours which Comethup spent with him were growing fewer and fewer. But one morning he sprang suddenly into the very midst of it all, as it were, and quite accidentally.
He had been attending the grammar school on the outskirts of the town, in a desultory fashion, staying away when it pleased him, throwing his soul into the work for a day or two, and thinking of nothing else, and then disappearing for the whole day for about a week, dashing home, tired and hungry and dusty at the end of each day, and refusing any account of his movements. Once or twice, when Comethup had been away with the captain, he had heard on his return that his cousin had called; but when he went himself to his uncle's house, to express his contrition, Mr. Robert Carlaw airily informed him that he hadn't the remotest notion where Brian was, or what he was doing.