From the of his barrel Edwin could survey, in the lordly and manner of people on a height, all the detail of his surroundings. Presently, in common with Hilda and the other of barrels, he became aware of the increased of a scene which was passing at a little distance, near a hokey-pokey barrow. The chief actors in the affair appeared to be a young policeman, the owner of the hokey-pokey barrow, and an old man. It speedily grew into one of those episodes which, occurring on the of some episode immensely greater, draw too much attention to themselves and the sense of proportion residing in most plain men, and especially in most policemen.  
“Give him a ha’porth o’ hokey,” said a voice. “He hasn’t got a tooth in his head, but it wants no chewing, hokey does na’.” There was a general from the little about the barrow.
 
“Aye! Give us some o’ that!” said the piping, silly voice of the old man. “But I mun’ get to that there platform, I’m telling ye. I’m telling all of ye.” He made a senile against the body of the policeman, as against a moveless , and then his hat was and it fell off, and somebody lifted it into the air with a neat kick so that it dropped on the barrow. All laughed. The old man laughed.
 
“Now, old sodger,” said the hot policeman . “None o’ this! None o’ this! I advise ye civilly to be quiet; that’s what I advise ye. You can’t go on th’ platform without a ticket.”
 
“Nay!” piped the old man. “Don’t I tell ye I lost it down th’ Sytch!”
 
“And where’s yer rosette?”
 
“Never had any rosette,” the old man replied. “I’m th’ oldest Sunday-schoo’ teacher i’ th’ Five Towns. Aye! Fifty years and more since I was Super at Turnhill Sunday schoo’, and all Turnhill knows on it. And I’ve got to get on that there platform. I’m th’ oldest Sunday schoo’ teacher i’ th’ Five Towns. And I was Super—”
 
Two ribald youngsters intoned ‘Super, Super,’ and another person unceremoniously jammed the felt hat on the old man’s head.
 
“It’s nowt to me if ye was forty Supers,” said the policeman, with menacing . “I’ve got my orders, and I’m not here to be knocked about. Where did ye have yer last drink?”
 
“No wine, no beer, nor spirituous liquors have I tasted for sixty-one years come Martinmas,” whimpered the old man. And he gave another against the policeman. “My name’s Shushions!” And he repeated in a treble, “My name’s Shushions!”
 
“Go and bury thysen, owd gaffer!” a Herculean young collier advised him.
 
“Why,” murmured Hilda, with a sharp frown, “that must be poor old Mr Shushions from Turnhill, and they’re guying him! You must stop it. Something must be done at once.”
 
She jumped down , and Edwin had to do likewise. He wondered how he should conduct himself so as to emerge creditably from the situation. He felt himself, and had always felt himself, to be the last man in the world capable of figuring with authority in a public . He public . The name of Shushions meant nothing to him; he had forgotten it, if indeed he had ever wittingly heard it. And he did not at first recognise the old man. from the barrel, he was merely an item in the loose-packed crowd. As, in the wake of Hilda, he pushed with false eagerness between stubborn shoulders, he heard the bands striking up again.
 
Two.
Approaching, he saw that the old man was very old. And then memory stirred. He began to that he had met the face before, that he knew something about it. And the face brought up a picture of the shop door and of his father beside it, a long time ago. He recalled his last day at school. Yes, of course! This was the old man named Shushions, some sort of an acquaintance of his father’s. This was the old man who had wept a surprising tear at sight of him, Edwin. The incident was so far off that it might have been recorded in history books. He had never seen Mr Shushions since. And the old man was changed, nearly out of recognition. The old man had lived too long; he had survived his dignity; he was now nothing but a bundle of capricious and instincts set in motion by ancient souvenirs remembered at hazard. The front of his face seemed to have given way in general . The lips were in a hollow; the cheeks were concave; the eyes had ; and there were pits in the forehead. The pale silvery straggling hairs might have been counted. The wrinkled skin was of a curious brown yellow, and the , instead of being blue, were outlined in Indian red. The impression given was that the flesh would be unpleasant and uncanny to the touch. The body was , and the neck eternally cricked backward in the effort of the eyes to look up. Moreover the old man was in a state of neglect. His beard alone proved that. His clothes were dirty and had the air of dirt. And he was dressed with striking oddness. He wore boots that were not a pair. His collar was only fastened by one button, behind; the ends oscillated like wings; he had forgotten to fasten them in front; he had forgotten to put on a necktie; he had forgotten the use of buttons on all his garments. He had grown down into a child again, but had not provided him with a nurse.
 
Worse than these merely material , was the toothless gibber of his protesting; the glassy look of from his eyes; and the smile and impotent frown that alternated on his features. He was a horrible and offensive old man. He was Time’s obscene victim. Edwin was revolted by the spectacle of the younger men baiting him. He was astonished that they were so short-sighted as not to be able to see the image of themselves in the old man, so imprudent as not to think of their own future, so brutalised. He wanted, by the simple force of desire, to and shelter the old man, to protect the old man not only from the insults of stupid and , but from the old man himself, from his own senility. He wanted to restore to him, by a system of , the dignity and the self-respect which he had innocently lost, and so to keep him decent to the eye, if not to the ear, until death came to repair its . And it was for his own sake, for the sake of his own image, as much as for the sake of the old man, that he wanted to do this.
 
Three.
All that flashed through his mind and heart in a second.
 
“I know this old gentleman, at least I know him by sight,” Hilda was saying to the policeman. “He’s very well known in Turnhill as an old Sunday school teacher, and I’m sure he ought to be on that platform.”
 
Before her eye, and her precise and voice, which had no trace of the local accent, the young policeman was secretly , and the louts fell back sheepishly.
 
“Yes, he’s a friend of my father’s,—Mr Clayhanger, printer,” said Edwin, behind her.
 
The old man stood blinking in the glare.
 
The policeman, ignoring Hilda, glanced at Edwin, and touched his cap.
 
“His friends hadn’t ought to let him out like this, s............