they're gone to, sir? That I do not know. Of course she will come
back."

The landlady begged him to wait; but to sit and see the minutes--the
black emissaries of perdition--fly upon their business, was torture as
big as to endure the tearing off of his flesh till the skeleton stood
out. Up to this point he had blamed himself; now he accused the just
heavens. Yea! is not a sinner their lawful quarry? and do they not slip
the hounds with savage glee, and hunt him down from wrong to evil, from
evil to infamy, from infamy to death, from death to woe everlasting?
And is this their righteousness?--He caught at the rusty garden rails to
steady his feet.

Algernon was employed in the comfortable degustation of his breakfast,
meditating whether he should transfer a further slice of ham or of
Yorkshire pie to his plate, or else have done with feeding and light a
cigar, when Edward appeared before him.

"Do you know where that man lives?"

Algernon had a prompting to respond, "Now, really! what man?" But
passion stops the breath of fools. He answered, "Yes."

"Have you the thousand in your pocket?"

Algernon nodded with a sickly grin.

"Jump up! Go to him. Give it up to him! Say, that if he leaves London on
the instant, and lets you see him off--say, it shall be doubled. Stay,
I'll write the promise, and put my signature. Tell him he shall, on my
word of honour, have another--another thousand pounds--as soon as I can
possibly obtain it, if he holds his tongue, and goes with you; and
see that he goes. Don't talk to me on any other subject, or lose one
minute."

Algernon got his limbs slackly together, trying to think of the
particular pocket in which he had left his cigar-case. Edward wrote a
line on a slip of note-paper, and signed his name beneath. With this and
an unsatisfied longing for tobacco Algernon departed, agreeing to meet
his cousin in the street where Dahlia dwelt.

"By Jove! two thousand! It's an expensive thing not to know your own
mind," he thought.

"How am I to get out of this scrape? That girl Rhoda doesn't care a
button for me. No colonies for me. I should feel like a convict if I
went alone. What on earth am I to do?"

It seemed preposterous to him that he should take a cab, when he had not
settled upon a scheme. The sight of a tobacconist's shop charmed one of
his more immediate difficulties to sleep. He was soon enabled to puff
consoling smoke.

"Ned's mad," he pursued his soliloquy. "He's a