set!

To think of Avon was for him now to think in terms of blood. And yet
his carnal soul hourly wrestled sore with thoughts of a wholly
different stamp; with those strange emotions which he had felt when in
Carmen's presence; with those unfamiliar sentiments which, had he not
fought them back so bitterly, might have made him anew, and--

But the remembrance maddened him. His face grew black, and his mouth
poured forth a torrent of foul imprecations and threats upon her and
upon those who stood with her. His rage towered again. He smote the
desk with his great fist. He fumed, he frothed, he hurled reason from
its throne, and bade the Furies again become his counselors.

Upon the desk before him lay the mortgage papers which Hitt had
signed. He had bought the mortgage from the bank which had loaned the
Express the money. He would crush that sheet now, crush it until the
ink dripped black from its emasculated pages! And when it fell into
his hands, he would turn it into the yellowest of sensational
journals, and hoot the memory of its present staff from ocean to
ocean!

Then, his head sunk upon his breast, he fell to wondering if he might
not secure a mortgage upon the Beaubien cottage, and turn its
occupants into the street. Ah, what a power was money! It was the
lever by which he moved the world, and clubbed its dull-witted
inhabitants into servile obeisance! Who could stand against him--

That girl!

He sprang to his feet and called Hood. That obedient lackey hastened
into his master's presence.

"The Ketchim trial?" snarled Ames.

"Called for this week, sir," replied Hood, glad that the announcement
could not possibly offend his superior.

"Humph! The--that girl?"

"Brought up from Avon, and lodged in the Tombs, sir."

"You tell Judge Spencer that if he allows her bail I'll see that his
federal appointment is killed, understand?"

"You may rely upon him, sir."

Ames regarded the man with a mixture of admiration and utter contempt.
For Hood stood before him a resplendent example of the influence of
the most subtle of all poisons, the insidious lure of money. Soul and
body he had prostituted himself and his undoubted talents to it. And
now, were he to be turned adrift by Ames, the man must inevitably sink
into oblivion, squeezed dry of every element of genuine manhood, and
weighted with the unclean lucre for which his bony fingers had always
itched.

"Will Cass defend Ketchim?" the master asked.

"