himself with Jesuits'
powder got from a woman of Madame Carwell's, so that he was half deaf
and blind. Yet in spite of the drug the fever went on burning.

But to anyone looking close it would have seemed that he had more to
trouble him than a malarial bout. The man was patently in an extreme
terror. His lantern-jaw hung as loose as if it had been broken. His lips
moved incessantly. He gripped savagely at his staff, and next moment
dropped it. He fussed with the hilt of his sword.... He was a coward,
and yet had come out to do murder.

It had taken real panic to bring him to the point. Throughout his
tattered life he had run many risks, but never a peril so instant as
this. As he had followed his quarry that afternoon his mind had been
full of broken memories. Bitter thoughts they were, for luck had not
been kind to him. A childhood in cheap lodgings in London and a dozen
French towns, wherever there was a gaming-table and pigeons for his
father to pluck. Then drunken father and draggletailed mother had faded
from the scene, and the boy had been left to a life of odd jobs and
fleeting patrons. His name was against him, for long before he reached
manhood the King had come back to his own, and his grandfather's bones
had jangled on a Tyburn gibbet. There was no hope for one of his family,
though Heaven knew his father had been a stout enough Royalist. At
eighteen the boy had joined the Roman Church, and at twenty relapsed to
the fold of Canterbury. But his bread-and-butter lay with Rome, and in
his trade few questions were asked about creed provided the work were
done. He had had streaks of fortune, for there had been times when he
lay soft and ate delicately and scattered money. But nothing lasted. He
had no sooner made purchase with a great man and climbed a little than
the scaffolding fell from his feet. He thought meanly of human nature
for in his profess he must cringe or snarl, always the undermost dog.
Yet he had some liking for the priests, who had been kind to him, and
there was always a glow in his heart for the pale wife who dwelt with
his child in the attic in Billingsgate. Under happier circumstances Mr.
Nicholas Lovel might have shone with the domestic virtues.

Business had been good of late, if that could ever be called good which
was undertaken under perpetual fear. He had been given orders which
took him into Whig circles, and had made progress among the group of
the King's Head Tavern. He had even won