IDOLS
By William J. Locke
John Lane: The Bodley Head London And New York
1898
TO
J. S.
IN MEMORIAM
M. S.
CONTENTS
IDOLS
PROEM
Two men once issued from the darkness and broke into a house. They came for robbery, but, finding an old man asleep in a chair, they murdered him. Then terrified at their deed, they fled, almost empty-handed, and so vanished into the night. Long afterwards they were overtaken by justice, confessed their crime and paid the penalty. Their sordid story is set down in the newspapers of the time. Otherwise they have passed into oblivion, and no man concerns himself with the dismal working of their souls. Their existence would not have found a mention here, were it not that the blow