ichard
in the scene where, in the illusion of his dying agony, swordless, he
continues to lunge and feint, may comprehend the frightful mental
overturn which prompted Raikes to sink inertly into a chair near the
table, and with foam-flecked lips fall to counting, one by one, the
miserable coals in the dull heap before him.

A silly smile overspread his sharp features like an apologetic sunbeam
intruding upon a bleak landscape.

A gleam of shrewd transaction shone in his eyes.

The clutch of unwonted acquisition contracted his hands.

Slowly he made partition of the large from the small coals; regretfully
he acknowledged the presence of the lesser bits as, with a chuckle of
greedy appreciation, he grouped the relative piles.

"Ha, ha! ha, ha! ha, ha!" What a laugh! What a frightful mockery of
mirth! "Ha, ha! ha, ha!" and raising both hands above his head he
brought them down upon the table with the lax inertia of utter collapse,
and fell forward upon his extended arms, his face buried in the squalid
heap beneath.

For a dreary hour he lay there without the twitch of a muscle, the well
of a sigh.

Like a Cyclop's eye the button at the bottom of the concave in the wall
seemed to stare with wonder upon this unfamiliar Raikes, who could thus
permit the radiator to swing open so heedlessly, and the inner recess to
expose its golden glut.

Suddenly there came a sharp rap upon the door, then a pause; but its
quick reverberations were unheeded by the prostrate man.

Again the thuds were administered to the echoing panels, and still no
response.

"Uncle, I say, uncle!" cried a man's voice. "Uncle!" and the shout was
followed by a vigorous kick upon the woodwork; "Uncle! Uncle!"

At this last appeal Raikes stirred uneasily, and as the assault was
continued with still greater stress, he managed finally to stagger
uncertainly to his feet.

As he raised his head to listen to the clamor without, the meanness of
his face, emphasized by the smudges of the coal in which it had so
recently reposed, presented itself to the scandalized eye in the wall.

The miserable creature depicted the last degree of absurdity, and yet
the ugly pathos of it all would have moved to pity.

"Uncle, I say!" and at the sound of the voice, which he recognized as
that of his lusty nephew, Raikes, with a return of his accustomed
intelligence, which had received its kindly repairs at the hands of
nature during his brief coma, cried sharply: "Wel