down
again, throwing about his legs like the grotesque, ragged limbs of a
scarecrow. And he sang and whistled and belched forth insults and hideous
blasphemies.

Then he came back to the yawning mouth of the well and, standing some way
off, as if still afraid to come nearer, he spat into it three times.

Nor was this enough for his hatred. There were some broken pieces of
statuary on the ground. He took a carved head, rolled it along the grass,
and sent it crashing down the well. A little farther away was a stack of
old, rusty cannon balls. These also he rolled to the edge and pushed in.
Five, ten, fifteen cannon balls went scooting down, one after the other,
banging against the walls with a loud and sinister noise which the echo
swelled into the angry roar of distant thunder.

"There, take that, Lupin! I'm sick of you, you dirty cad!
That's for the spokes you put in my wheel, over that damned
inheritance! ... Here, take this, too!... And this!... And
this!... Here's a chocolate for you in case you're hungry.... Do you
want another? Here you are, old chap! catch!"

He staggered, seized with a sort of giddiness, and had to squat on his
haunches. He was utterly spent. However, obeying a last convulsion, he
still found the strength to kneel down by the well, and leaning over the
darkness, he stammered, breathlessly:

"Hi! I say! Corpse! Don't go knocking at the gate of hell at once!... The
little girl's joining you in twenty minutes.... Yes, that's it, at four
o'clock.... You know I'm a punctual man and keep my appointments to the
minute.... She'll be with you at four o'clock exactly.

"By the way, I was almost forgetting: the inheritance--you know,
Mornington's hundred millions--well, that's mine. Why, of course! You
can't doubt that I took all my precautions! Florence will explain
everything presently.... It's very well thought out--you'll
see--you'll see--"

He could not get out another word. The last syllables sounded more
like hiccoughs. The sweat poured from his hair and his forehead, and
he sank to the ground, moaning like a dying man tortured by the last
throes of death.

He remained like that for some minutes, with his head in his hands,
shivering all over his body. He appeared to be suffering everywhere, in
each anguished muscle, in each sick nerve. Then, under the influence of a
thought that seemed to make him act unconsciously, one of his hands crept
spasmodically down his side, and, groping, utterin