and put that swell to the grindstone for Act 2 of the comedy;
will yer?"

Ezra Baroni smiled, where he leaned against the table, looking over some
papers.

"Dis is a delicate matter; don't you come putting your big paw in
it--you'll spoil it all."

Ben Davis growled afresh:

"No, I ain't a-going. You know as well as me I can't show in the thing.
Hanged if I wouldn't almost lief risk a lifer out at Botany Bay for the
sake o' wringing my fine-feathered bird myself, but I daren't. If he
was to see me in it, all 'ud be up. You must do it. Get along; you look
uncommon respectable. If your coat-tails was a little longer, you might
right and away be took for a parson."

The Jew laughed softly, the welsher grimly, at the compliment they paid
the Church; Baroni put up his papers into a neat Russia letter book.
Excellently dressed, without a touch of flashiness, he did look
eminently respectable--and lingered a moment.

"I say, dear child; vat if de Marquis vant to buy off and hush up? Ten
to von he vill; he care no more for monish than for dem macaroons, and
he love his friend, dey say."

Ben Davis took his legs off the table with a crash, and stood
up, flushed, thirstily eager, almost aggressive in his peremptory
excitement.

"Without wringing my dainty bird's neck? Not for a million paid out o'
hand! Without crushing my fine gentleman down into powder? Not for all
the blunt of every one o' the Rothschilds! Curse his woman's face! I've
got to keep dark now; but when he's crushed, and smashed, and ruined,
and pilloried, and drove out of this fine world, and warned off of all
his aristocratic race-courses, then I'll come in and take a look at him;
then I'll see my brilliant gentleman a worn-out, broken-down swindler, a
dying in the bargain!"

The intense malignity, the brutal hungry lust for vengeance that
inspired the words, lent their coarse vulgarity something that was
for the moment almost tragical in its strength; almost horrible in its
passion. Ezra Baroni looked at him quietly, then without another word
went out--to a congenial task.

"Dat big child is a fool," mused the subtler and gentler Jew. "Vengeance
is but de breath of de vind; it blow for you one day, it blow against
you de next; de only real good is monish."

The Seraph had ridden back from Iffesheim to the Bad in company with
some Austrian officers, and one or two of his own comrades. He had left
the Course late, staying to exhaust every possi