unt Victor in their background--a sardonic, smiling,
light-hearted Nemesis; and if he detested him previously as a merely
possible danger, he hated him now with every fibre of his being as the
cause of his upheaval.

And then, in this way that is not uncommon with the sinner, he must pity
himself because circumstances had so consistently conspired against him.

He had come into the garden after the interview with Argyll had made it
plain that the darkest passages in his servant's history were known to
him, and had taken off his hat to get the night breeze on his brow which
was wet with perspiration. The snow was still on the ground; among the
laden bushes, the silent soaring trees of fir and ash, it seemed as if
this was no other than the land of outer darkness whereto the lost are
driven at the end. It maddened him to think of what he had been brought
to; he shook his fist in a childish and impotent petulance at the
spacious unregarding east where Doom lay--the scene of all his passions.

"God's curse on the breed of meddlers!" he said. "Another month and I
was out of these gutters and hell no more to tempt me. To be the douce
good-man, and all the tales of storm forgotten by the neighbours
that may have kent them; to sit perhaps with bairns--her bairns
and mine--about my knee, and never a twinge of the old damnable
inclinations, and the flageolet going to the honestest tunes. All lost!
All lost for a rat that takes to the hold of an infernal ship, and comes
here to chew at the ropes that dragged me to salvation. This is where it
ends! It's the judgment come a day ower soon for Sim MacTaggart. But Sim
MacTaggart will make the rat rue his meddling."

He had come out with no fixed idea of what he next should do, but one
step seemed now imperative--he must go to Doom, otherwise his blood
would burst every vein in his body. He set forth with the stimulus of
fury for the barracks where his men lay, of whom half-a-dozen at least
were his to the gate of the Pit itself, less scrupulous even than
himself because more ignorant, possessed of but one or two impulses--a
foolish affection for him and an inherited regard for rapine too rarely
to be indulged in these tame latter days. To call them out, to find them
armed and ready for any enterprise of his was a matter of brief time.
They set out knowing nothing at all of his object, and indifferent so
long as this adorable gentleman was to lead them.

When they came to Doom the t