-in that, one fixed idea had blotted out
every other vestige of humanity. Each starting vein, bone, and muscle
on the hungry visage had "stand and deliver" scarred all over it. The
eager metallic glitter of his eyes, the rigid harshness of his mouth,
and the nameless craving that seemed to speak from his lean, attenuated
cheeks, united to make the name of Hardy Gripstone and Beast synonymous.
He looked like a beast, he ate like a beast, he lived like a beast.

Beast started out of every bristle on his unkempt head; it shone in the
unhealthy gloss of his battered hat; it wallowed on the stock that clung
around his dirty neck; it glistened in the grease on his dingy clothes;
it starved on his thin, claw-like hands; it flourished in the grime
imbedded under his nails; it creaked in his worn-out, down-trodden
shoes. Men, as he shambled by on the streets, unconsciously muttered,
"Beast!" women, shrinking from him, whispered, "Beast!" between the
heart-throbs the terror of his presence created; children, hushing their
cries in silent horror at his grimace, stared "Beast!" out of their
wonder-stricken eyes. You might bray him in a mortar and boil the powder
in a caldron, yet amid all the envy, hatred, and malice that made up the
ingredients, Beast would have triumphantly floated on the top. Beast!
Beast! Beast! Beast! The universal verdict clutched him like the shirt
of Nessus. He actually grew proud of the title, and received the stigma
with a cluck of beastly joy, as though inspired with a certain beastly
ambition to deserve it. The laugh with which he hailed any appeal to his
charity was monstrous. It commenced with a leathery wheeze like the puff
of asthmatic bellows; it croaked with a grating chuckle, as if his
throat opened on rusty hinges; and then it broke out in a shrill vocal
shudder, that sounded like the shriek of a hyena.

It is an idiosyncrasy of mine to foster just such pet abominations; and
I cultivated Hardy Gripstone. My advances were not encouraged by that
overweening tenderness that indicates the possible victim of misplaced
confidence. Far from "wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck
at," it seemed to have been weaned years agone, and my milk of human
kindness fell flat as any whipped syllabub.

Felicitous as were the suggestions of his suspicious brain, it took me
fully three months to descend in his bearish estimation from a
highwayman to a ninny. There was an incredibility in my apparent la