you, I drink to the man who stands on the truth--truth,
gentlemen, truth!"

Again he lifted a glass of whisky to his lips and set it down empty.

"I'm going to bed," said Sprague.

"And I," said Purvis.

"And I, gentlemen," said Leicester, "remain here. Like all men who
undertake great enterprises, I must make my plans. As a champion of
truth I must vindicate it. I live to rid the world of lies, of sham, of
hypocrisy. Good-night, gentlemen, good-night."

The whisky was beginning to show its effects at last, although his voice
was still clear, his hand still steady. An unhealthy flush had come to
his cheeks; the strange look in his eyes had become more pronounced.

And yet had a stranger entered the room at that moment, that stranger
would have been struck by his tall, stalwart figure and his striking
face. For Radford Leicester was no ordinary-looking man. Compared with
him the others were commonplace. Neither was his face a bad face. It
suggested lack of faith and lack of hope, but it did not suggest evil.
Moreover, the well-shaped head, the broad forehead, the finely formed
features, suggested intellectuality and force of character. It also told
of a man whom nothing could daunt when his mind was made up. But it was
not the face of a happy man. No man who is without faith and hope can
be.

Radford Leicester had come into the world handicapped. His father was a
hard drinker before him, and he had inherited the love for alcohol. But
more, he had been educated in a bad school. His mother had died when he
was a child, and thus he became entirely under his father's influence.
His father was a clever man, but a man whom life had embittered. He had
been embittered by the death of his wife; he had been embittered because
he had never obtained the success he had coveted. He saw men who did not
possess half the brains or half the scholarship which he possessed, leap
into fame, while he remained obscure. Perhaps this was because his
theory of life was so utterly hopeless, and his faith in men and women
was so little. Young Radford was naturally influenced by his father's
views and his father's character, and thus by the time he was old enough
to go to a public school he was, like Shelley, an atheist.

Presently his father, who was ambitious for his son's future, sent him
to Oxford. He became a student at Magdalen College, where he obtained,
not only a reputation as a scholar and a debater, but he became
notorious prett