and as no
philosopher was at hand to tell him that there is no strong sentiment
without some terror, as there is no real religion without a little
fetishism, he emitted his own conclusion, which surely could not go to
the root of the matter.

"I'm hanged if I don't think they are to him what liquor is to me.
Brandy--pah!"

He made a disgusted face, and produced a genuine shudder. Schomberg
listened to him in wonder. It looked as if the very scoundrelism, of
that--that Swede would protect him; the spoil of his iniquity standing
between the thief and the retribution.

"That's so, old buck." Ricardo broke the silence after contemplating
Schomberg's mute dejection with a sort of sympathy. "I don't think this
trick will work."

"But that's silly," whispered the man deprived of the vengeance which he
had seemed already to hold in his hand, by a mysterious and exasperating
idiosyncrasy.

"Don't you set yourself to judge a gentleman." Ricardo without anger
administered a moody rebuke. "Even I can't understand the governor
thoroughly. And I am an Englishman and his follower. No, I don't think I
care to put it before him, sick as I am of staying here."

Ricardo could not be more sick of staying than Schomberg was of seeing
him stay. Schomberg believed so firmly in the reality of Heyst as
created by his own power of false inferences, of his hate, of his love
of scandal, that he could not contain a stifled cry of conviction
as sincere as most of our convictions, the disguised servants of our
passions, can appear at a supreme moment.

"It would have been like going to pick up a nugget of a thousand pounds,
or two or three times as much, for all I know. No trouble, no--"

"The petticoat's the trouble," Ricardo struck in.

He had resumed his noiseless, feline, oblique prowling, in which an
observer would have detected a new character of excitement, such as a
wild animal of the cat species, anxious to make a spring, might betray.
Schomberg saw nothing. It would probably have cheered his drooping
spirits; but in a general way he preferred not to look at Ricardo.
Ricardo, however, with one of his slanting, gliding, restless glances,
observed the bitter smile on Schomberg's bearded lips--the unmistakable
smile of ruined hopes.

"You are a pretty unforgiving sort of chap," he said, stopping for a
moment with an air of interest. "Hang me if I ever saw anybody look so
disappointed! I bet you would send black plague to that islan