more than
near, cannot be a vast one; which, for present purposes, may be taken
to mean that if you have got to make money you must make it anyhow, or
not at all--'anyhow' covering such methods as are involved in the
conventional term 'rascality.' If you have got it you can run as
straight as you like. We haven't got it--at least not enough of it
yet--and so we are making it, and, like the rest of the world, making it
anyhow. There's the whole case in a nutshell, Stanninghame."

"Why, of course. But, if only we could bring Holmes round to that
pre-eminently sensible standpoint! I never could have believed the
fellow would turn out such an ass. I am more than sorry, Hazon, that I
should have influenced you to bring him along."

"Oh, Holmes is young, and hardly knows the meaning of the term 'hard
experience,' as we know it. Still, in his way, he's useful enough, and
first-rate in a fight; and when he comes to bank his share he'll forget
to feel over particular as to how he acquired it. That's mere ordinary
human nature, and Holmes is far from being an abnormal unit."

"No, but he still affects a conscience. What if he goes back and takes
on that blue-eyed girl he was smitten with, and, turning soft,
incontinently gives us away?"

"Are _you_ on the croak, Stanninghame? That's odd. Here, how's your
pulse? Let's time it." And Hazon reached out his hand.

"Well, yes; it is unusual. But it's d----d hot, and the steaminess of it
depresses me at times," returned Laurence, with a queer, reckless laugh.

"He won't give us away, never fear," said Hazon carelessly. "He won't
take on that girl, because she'll have forgotten him long ago; that,
too, being ordinary human nature. And--nobody ever did give me away yet.
I don't somehow think anybody is ever likely to."

Both sides of this remark struck a chord within Laurence's mind; the
first, a jarring one, since it voiced a misgiving which had at times
assailed himself, specially at such periods of depression as this under
which he was now suffering. For the second, the tone was characteristic
of the speaker and the subject. It seemed to flash forth more than a
menace, in its stern, unrelenting ruthlessness of purpose, while the
words seemed to recall the warning so darkly let fall by Rainsford and
others regarding his present confederate. "Other men have gone up
country with Hazon, but--_not one of them has ever returned_." To
himself the words contained no menace. He trusted