men had made their pile, why should not he? Rainsford, for
instance, who had been, if possible, more down on his luck than
himself--Rainsford had gone out to the new gold town while it was yet
very new and had made a good thing of it. Two or three other
acquaintances of his had gone there and had made very much more than a
good thing of it. Why should not he?

Laurence Stanninghame was just touching middle age. As he stood at the
window, the murky September sun seemed to bring out the lines and
wrinkles of his clear-cut face, which was distinctly the face of a man
who has not made a good thing of life, and who can never for a moment
lose sight of that fact. There were lines above the eyes, clear, blue,
and somewhat sunken eyes, which denoted the habit of the brows to
contract on very slight provocation, and far oftener than was good for
their owner's peace of mind, and the bronze underlying the clear skin
told of a former life in the open--possibly under a warmer sun than that
now playing upon it. As to its features, it was a strong face, but there
was a certain indefinable something about it when off its guard, which
would have told a close physiognomist of the possession of latent
instincts, unknown to their possessor, instincts which, if stifled,
choked, were not dead, and which, if ever their depths were stirred,
would yield forth strange and dangerous possibilities.

He was of fine constitution, active and wiry; but the cramped life and
squalid worry of a year-in year-out, semi-detached, suburban existence
had, as he told himself, played the mischief with his nerves, and now to
this was added the ghastly vista of impending actual beggary. Whatever
he did and wherever he went this thought would not be quenched. It was
ever with him, gnawing like an aching tooth. Lying awake at night it
would glare at him with spectral eyes in the darkness; then, unless he
could force himself by all manner of strange and artificial means, such
as repeating favourite verse, and so forth, to throw it off, good-bye to
sleep--result, nerves yet further shaken, a succession of brooding days,
and system thrown off its balance by domestic friction and strife. Many
a man has sought a remedy for far less ill in the bottle, whether of
grog or laudanum; but this one's character was in its strength proof
against the first, while for the latter, that might come, but only as a
very last extremity. Meanwhile ofttimes he wondered how that blank,
h