at the reckless man's
ghastly end. He merely thought of himself. He saw only how the man's
death affected his personal interests. At last he gurgled out some
words. He scarce knew what he said.

"There's nothing to be done. Yes--no--yes, you'd better go up to the
Allandales," he went on uncertainly. "They'll send a rescue party."

The trooper dashed off and Lablache securely fastened the door. Then he
put the shutter over the window, and, notwithstanding that it was broad
daylight still, he lit the lamp.

Once more he returned to his protesting chair, into which he almost
fell. To him this last catastrophe was as the last straw. What was now
to become of the settlement; what was to become of him? Horrocks gone;
the troopers withdrawn, or, at least, without a guiding hand, what
might Retief not be free to do while the settlement awaited the coming
of a fresh detachment of police. He impotently cursed the raider. The
craven weakness, induced by his condition of nervous prostration, was
almost pitiable. All the selfishness which practically monopolized his
entire nature displayed itself in his terror. He cared nothing for
others. He believed that Retief was at war with him alone. He believed
that the raider sought only his wealth--his wealth which his years of
hard work and unscrupulous methods had laboriously piled up--the wealth
he loved and lived for--the wealth which was to him as a god. He thought
of all he had already lost. He counted it up in thousands, and his eyes
grew wide with horror and despair as the figures mounted up, up, until
they represented a great fortune.

The long-suffering chair creaked under him as he flung himself back in
it, his pasty, heavy-jowled face was ghastly under the lash of
despairing thought. Only a miser, one of those wretched creatures who
live only for the contemplation of their hoarded wealth, could
understand the feelings of the miserable man as he lay back in his
chair.

The man who had thus reduced the money-lender must have understood his
nature as did the inquisitors of old understand the weaknesses of their
victims. For surely he could have found no other vulnerable spot in the
great man's composition.

The first shock of the trooper's news began to pass. Lablache's mind
began to balance itself again. Such a state of nerves as was his could
not last and the man remain sane. Possibly the thought that he was still
a rich man came to his aid. Possibly the thought of hundred