usiness is inevitable, I should have found it in this encounter with
the men."

"It comes as a fillip to your already blunted purpose," said the lawyer
with a curious smile. "Odd, isn't it?"

"Blunted!" said Hugh Ritson, and there was a perceptible elevation of
the eyebrows.

Presently he drew a long breath, and said with an air of relief:

"Ah, well, if she suffers who has suffered enough already, he, at least,
will be out of the way forever."

Bonnithorne shifted slightly on his seat.

"You think so?" he asked.

Something cynical in the tone caught Hugh Ritson's ear.

"It was a bad change, wasn't it?" added the lawyer; "this one is likely
to be a deal more troublesome."

Hugh Ritson went on with his dressing in silence.

"You see, by the interchange your positions were reversed," continued
the lawyer.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the other was in your hands,
while you are in the hands of this one."

Hugh Ritson's foot fell heavily at that instant, but he merely said,
with suppressed quietness:

"There was this one's crime."

"Was--precisely," said Mr. Bonnithorne.

Hugh Ritson looked up with a look of inquiry.

"When you gave the crime to the other, this one became a free man," the
lawyer explained.

There was a silence.

"What does it all come to?" said Hugh Ritson, sullenly.

"That your hold of Paul Drayton is gone forever."

"How so?"

"Because you can never incriminate him without first incriminating
yourself," said the lawyer.

"Who talks of incrimination?" said Hugh Ritson, testily. "To-day, this
man is to take upon himself the name of Paul Lowther--his true name,
though he doesn't know it, blockhead as he is. Therefore, I ask again:
What does it all come to?"

Mr. Bonnithorne shifted uneasily.

"Nothing," he said, meekly, but the curious smile still played about his
downcast face.

Then there was silence again.

"Do you know that Mercy Fisher is likely to regain her sight?" said
Hugh.

"You don't say so? Dear me, dear me!" said the lawyer, sincere at last.
"In all the annals of jurisprudence there is no such extraordinary case
of identity being conclusively provable by one witness only, and of that
witness becoming blind. Odd, isn't it?"

Hugh Ritson smiled coldly.

"Odd? Say providential," he answered. "I believe that's what you church
folk call it when the Almighty averts a disaster that is made imminent
by your own short-sightednes