amination, and can detect
a secret fact by tests as fine as those by which the chemist discovers
a grain of poison. Would that I could see him myself! but this might be
imprudent."

[Illustration: 452]

"Trust all to me, D'Esmonde; and believe me, that with men like him
habit has taught me better how to deal than you, with all your higher
skill, could accomplish. I will contrive to see him to-night, or early
to-morrow. The under-turnkey was from my own parish, and I can make my
visit as if to _him._"

"How humiliating is it," cried D'Esmonde, rising and pacing the
room,--"how humiliating to think that incidents like these are to sway
and influence us in our road through life; but so it is, the great
faults that men commit are less dangerous than are imprudent intimacies
and ill-judged associations. It is not on the high bluff or the bold
headland that the craft is shipwrecked, but on some small sunken
rock,--some miserable reef beneath the waves! Could we but be 'penny
wise' in morals, Michel, how rich we should be in knowledge of life! I
never needed this fellow,--never wanted his aid in any way! The unhappy
mention of Godfrey's name--the spell that in some shape or other has
worked on my heart through life--first gave him an interest in my eyes;
and so, bit by bit, I have come to be associated with him, till--would
you believe it?--I cannot separate myself from him. Has it ever occurred
to you, Michel, that the Evil One sometimes works his ends by infusing
into the nature of some chance intimate that species of temptation by
which courageous men are so easily seduced,--I mean that love of
hazard, that playing with fire, so intoxicating in its excitement? I am
convinced that to _me_ no bait could be so irresistible. Tell me that
the earth is mined, and you invest it with a charm that all the verdure
of 'Araby the Blest' could never give it! I love to handle steel when
the lightning is playing; not, mark me, from any contempt of life, far
less in any spirit of blasphemous defiance, but simply for the glorious
sentiment of peril. Be assured that when all other excitements pall upon
the mind, this one survives in all its plenitude, and, as the poet says
of avarice, becomes a good 'old gentlemanly vice.'"

"You will come along with me, D'Esmonde?" said the other, whose thoughts
were concentrated on the business before him.

"Yes, Michel, I am as yet unknown here; and it may be, too, that this
Meekins might wish to se