hand, he said solemnly--

"It is the judgment of God!"

CHAPTER XXX.

NEMESIS.

Men, according to the old Greek, "are the sport of the gods," who,
enthroned on high Olympus, put evil desires into the hearts of mortals;
and when evil actions were the outcome of evil thoughts, amused
themselves by watching the ineffectual efforts made by their victims to
escape a relentless deity called Nemesis, who exacted a penalty for
their evil deeds. It was no doubt very amusing--to the gods--but it is
questionable if the men found it so. They had their revenge, however,
for weary of plaguing puny mortals, who whimpered and cried when they
saw they could not escape, the inevitable Nemesis turned her attention
from actors to spectators, and made a clean sweep of the whole Olympian
hierarchy. She smashed their altars, pulled down their statues, and
after she had completed her malicious work, found that she had,
vulgarly speaking, been cutting off her nose to spite her face, for
she, too, became an object of derision and of disbelief, and was forced
to retire to the same obscurity to which she had relegated the other
deities. But men found out that she had not been altogether useless as
a scapegoat upon which to lay the blame of their own shortcomings, so
they created a new deity called Fate, and laid any misfortune which
happened to them to her charge. Her worship is still very popular,
especially among lazy and unlucky people, who never bestir themselves:
on the ground that whether they do so or not their lives are already
settled by Fate. After all, the true religion of Fate has been preached
by George Eliot, when she says that our lives are the outcome of our
actions. Set up any idol you please upon which to lay the blame of
unhappy lives and baffled ambitions, but the true cause is to be found
in men themselves. Every action, good or bad, which we do has its
corresponding reward, and Mark Frettlby found it so, for the sins of
his youth were now being punished in his old age. No doubt he had
sinned gaily enough in that far-off time when life's cup was still
brimming with wine, and no asp hid among the roses; but Nemesis had
been an unseen spectator of all his thoughtless actions, and now she
came to demand her just dues. He felt somewhat as Faust must have felt
when Mephistopheles suggested a visit to Hades, in repayment of those
years of magic youth and magic power. So long ago it seemed since he
had married Rosanna M