st from the child's lips involuntarily,
her horror overcoming her fear of the speaker.

"I didn't ask you if you could," remarked Mr. Woodstock, with something
like a sneer, tapping the desk with the fingers of his right hand. "I
asked whether you could carry a message. Can you, or not?"

"Yes, I can," stammered Ida.

"Then take _that_ message, and tell your mother it's all I've got to
say. Run away."

He rose and stood with his hands behind him, watching her. Ida made
what haste she could to the door, and sped out into the street.

CHAPTER III

ANTECEDENTS

It would not have been easy to find another instance of a union of keen
intellect and cold heart so singular as that displayed in the character
of Abraham Woodstock. The man s life had been strongly consistent from
the beginning; from boyhood a powerful will had borne him triumphantly
over every difficulty, and in each decisive instance his will had been
directed by a shrewd intelligence which knew at once the strength of
its own resources and the multiplied weaknesses of the vast majority of
men. In the pursuit of his ends he would tolerate no obstacle which his
strength would suffice to remove. In boyhood and early manhood the
exuberance of his physical power was wont to manifest itself in brutal
self-assertion. At school he was the worst kind of bully, his
ferociousness tempered by no cowardice. Later on, he learned that a too
demonstrative bearing would on many occasions interfere with his
success in life; he toned down his love of muscular victory, and only
allowed himself an outbreak every now and then, when he felt he could
afford the indulgence. Put early into an accountant's office, and
losing his father about the same time (the parent, who had a diseased
heart, was killed by an outburst of fury to which Abraham gave way on
some trivial occasion), he had henceforth to fight his own battle, and
showed himself very capable of winning it. In many strange ways he
accumulated a little capital, and the development of commercial genius
put him at a comparatively early age on the road to fortune. He kept to
the business of an accountant, and by degrees added several other
distinct callings. He became a lender of money in several shapes,
keeping both a loan-office and a pawnbroker's shop. In middle age he
frequented the race-course, but, for sufficient reasons, dropped that
pursuit entirely before he had turned his fiftieth year. As a youth he
had m