CHAPTER THE FIRST.
THE ALTERED WORLD.
I.
Change played in its new fashion with the world for twenty years.

To most men the new things came little by little and day by day, remarkably enough, but not so abruptly as to overwhelm.

But to one man at least the full accumulation of those two decades of the Food's work was to be revealed suddenly and amazingly in one day.

For our purpose it is convenient to take him for that one day and to tell something of the things he saw.

This man was a convict, a prisoner for life--his crime is no concern of ours--whom the law saw fit to pardon after twenty years.
One summer morning this poor wretch, who had left the world a young man of three-and-twenty, found himself thrust out again from the grey simplicity of toil and discipline, that had become his life, into a dazzling freedom.