f, that was more
to him than meat and drink, encountered only a chill hardness,--the
bottom of the jar.

He had not emptied it when filling his pouch that morning; and being
much preoccupied had not even noticed how little was left. Evidently,
during his absence, a hotel servant had helped himself to the remaining
handful, and a clear ten days must elapse before the arrival of a fresh
consignment from home.

He gathered up the remaining scraps, and gazed at them blankly. His
consignments were carefully timed to overlap one another. By rights
the jar should have contained quite a fortnight's supply of his elixir
vitae: and it took him one or two seconds to grasp the full
significance of that which had befallen him.

"Great Heaven! I must have been overdoing it like blazes this last
month," he reflected grimly, "And how about the next ten days?"

He stood aghast before that simple question, and its obvious answer.
It was as if the earth has opened under his feet; as if he had suddenly
discovered that only a thin crust intervened between himself and the
crater of a volcano. And he had travelled hitherward blindly; goaded
by the threefold necessity to work, and sleep, and forget. Thus,
stealthily, inexorably, a habit creeps upon a man; enclosing him mesh
by mesh in a network imponderable as spun silk, tenacious as steel
wire. A sudden movement, a break in the hypnotic influence of routine,
and he wakes to find himself prisoned in a web of his own weaving.

Lenox pushed aside the jar impatiently, as though it were in some way
to blame; and sank into his chair, head bent, legs outstretched; the
picture of defeat. All his thoughts and hopes crashed about him in
ruins: and Lenox, contemplating the fragments with a numb acquiescence
far removed from resignation, saw only the old maddening irony at work;
saw himself, standing yet again, on the threshold of an Eden locked and
barred against him; felt in every nerve the grip of the pitiless fact,
and asked himself fiercely; "What next?"

Gradually thought penetrated the dull ache of rebellion; and Memory,
that capricious handmaid of the brain, unearthed from the rubbish-heap
of things forgotten, an incident of early days.

He recalled how, on a certain night, after the confiscation of their
candles, and a stern injunction from old Ailie to speak "nae word" till
morning, his elder brother--greatly daring--had invaded his bed, and
with lips set close to his ear had st