able, playing dominoes and draughts, or poring over tattered
books by the light of the flickering oil-lamps, with tin reflectors, that
hang against the earth walls. None of them are smoking, though several are
sucking vigorously at empty pipes; and the rapacious light that glares in
every eye as Saxham mechanically knocks out the ashes from his smoked-out
briar-root against the side-post of the entrance is sufficient witness to
the pangs that they endure.

Perhaps it is characteristic of the Doctor that, with a hell of revengeful
fury seething in his heart, and a legion of devils unloosed and shrieking,
prompting him to murder, he should have paused to relieve the
tobacco-famine of the sentry, and be moved to a further sacrifice of his
sole luxury by the sight of those empty pipes. The old rubber pouch,
pitched by a cricketer's hand, flies in among the domino-players, and
rebounds from a pondering head, as the orderly comes back, and lifts one
corner of the tarpaulin for the Doctor to pass in. A pack of ravening
wolves tussling over an unusually small baby might distantly reproduce the
scene Saxham leaves behind him. The trestle-table and benches are upset,
and men and benches, draughts and dominoes, welter in horrible confusion
over the earthen floor, when the scandalised orderly-corporal rushes in to
quell the riot, and thenceforward joins the rioters.

They fight like wolves, but the man who rises up from among the rest,
clutching the prize, and grinning a three-cornered grin because his upper
lip is split, divides the tobacco fairly to the last thread. They even
share out the indiarubber pouch, and chew the pieces as long as the
flavour lasts. When the thick, fragrant smoke curls up from the lighted
pipes, it steals round the edges of the tarpaulin that has dropped behind
Saxham, passing in to the wreaking of vengeance upon the thief whose
profane and covetous hand has plucked the white lily of the Convent
garden.

Now, with that deadly hate surging in his veins, with the lust to kill
tingling in every nerve and muscle, he will soon stand in the presence of
his enemy, and hers. As he thinks of this, suddenly a bell rings. The
sound comes from the north, so it cannot be the bell of the Catholic
Church, or that of the Protestant Church, or the bell of the Wesleyan
meeting-house, or of the Dutch Kerk.

"_Clang-clang! clang-clang! Clang----_"

The last clang is broken off suddenly, as though the rope has been jerked