cries and odours of the town, were undefinably
oppressive. Notwithstanding, he walked a long time, saying to himself
that he would give the letter every chance. At last, when he thought
that Pippin must have finished, he went back to the house.

Pippin had finished. His forehead rested on the table, his arms hung at
his sides; he was stone-dead! His face wore a smile, and by his side lay
an empty laudanum bottle.

The letter, closely, beautifully written, lay before him. It was a fine
document, clear, masterly, detailed, nothing slurred, nothing concealed,
nothing omitted; a complete review of the company's position; it ended
with the words: "Your humble servant, RICHARD PIPPIN."

Scorrier took possession of it. He dimly understood that with those last
words a wire had snapped. The border-line had been overpassed; the point
reached where that sense of proportion, which alone makes life possible,
is lost. He was certain that at the moment of his death Pippin could
have discussed bimetallism, or any intellectual problem, except the one
problem of his own heart; that, for some mysterious reason, had been
too much for him. His death had been the work of a moment of supreme
revolt--a single instant of madness on a single subject! He found on
the blotting-paper, scrawled across the impress of the signature, "Can't
stand it!" The completion of that letter had been to him a struggle
ungraspable by Scorrier. Slavery? Defeat? A violation of Nature? The
death of justice? It were better not to think of it! Pippin could have
told--but he would never speak again. Nature, at whom, unaided, he had
dealt so many blows, had taken her revenge...!

In the night Scorrier stole down, and, with an ashamed face, cut off a
lock of the fine grey hair. 'His daughter might like it!' he thought....

He waited till Pippin was buried, then, with the letter in his pocket,
started for England.

He arrived at Liverpool on a Thursday morning, and travelling to town,
drove straight to the office of the company. The Board were sitting.
Pippin's successor was already being interviewed. He passed out as
Scorrier came in, a middle-aged man with a large, red beard, and a foxy,
compromising face. He also was a Cornishman. Scorrier wished him luck
with a very heavy heart.

As an unsentimental man, who had a proper horror of emotion, whose
living depended on his good sense, to look back on that interview with
the Board was painful. It had excited in him a