chair, partly because an idea had struck his mind.

Hopping madly, he added one more parallel between himself and Hamlet by
soliloquizing aloud.

'I'll be hanged if I commit suicide,' he yelled.

And as he spoke the words a curious peace fell on him, as on a man who
has awakened from a nightmare. He sat down at the desk. What an idiot
he had been ever to contemplate self-destruction. What could have
induced him to do it? By his own hand to remove himself, merely in
order that a pack of ungrateful brutes might wallow in his money--it
was the scheme of a perfect fool.

He wouldn't commit suicide. Not if he knew it. He would stick on and
laugh at them. And if he did have an occasional pain inside, what of
that? Napoleon had them, and look at him. He would be blowed if he
committed suicide.

With the fire of a new resolve lighting up his eyes, he turned to seize
the six letters and rifle them of their contents.

They were gone.

It took Mr Meggs perhaps thirty seconds to recollect where they had
gone to, and then it all came back to him. He had given them to the
demon Pillenger, and, if he did not overtake her and get them back, she
would mail them.

Of all the mixed thoughts which seethed in Mr Meggs's mind at that
moment, easily the most prominent was the reflection that from his
front door to the post office was a walk of less than five minutes.

* * * * *

Miss Pillenger walked down the sleepy street in the June sunshine,
boiling, as Mr Meggs had done, with indignation. She, too, had been
shaken to the core. It was her intention to fulfil her duty by posting
the letters which had been entrusted to her, and then to quit for ever
the service of one who, for six years a model employer, had at last
forgotten himself and showed his true nature.

Her meditations were interrupted by a hoarse shout in her rear; and,
turning, she perceived the model employer running rapidly towards her.
His face was scarlet, his eyes wild, and he wore no hat.

Miss Pillenger's mind worked swiftly. She took in the situation in a
flash. Unrequited, guilty love had sapped Mr Meggs's reason, and she
was to be the victim of his fury. She had read of scores of similar
cases in the newspapers. How little she had ever imagined that she
would be the heroine of one of these dramas of passion.

She looked for one brief instant up and down the street. Nobody was in
sight. With a loud cry she began to run.

'S