ning for a hacrobat. Here,
Bobby, help us up with the fiery untamed steed. That's the second time
he's chucked me over the roof. Wait a moment, sir, and I'll drive you
on; we may ketch 'em yet. Don't do a man out of his fare."

"Too late," was all Stratton could think of then. "I could not overtake
it now."

And in a dim, misty way he seemed to be watching Brettison hurrying away
with that heavy, awkward case which contained--

"Yes," he muttered with a shudder, "it must be that."

CHAPTER FORTY TWO.

BY A RUSE.

Such a chance did not come in Stratton's way again. "If I had drunk
that when Guest came and interrupted me--when was it? Two years and
more ago," sighed Stratton one night, "what an infinity of suffering I
should have been spared. All the hopes and disappointments of that
weary time, all the madness and despair of the morning when that
wretched convict came, all my remorse, my battles with self, the
struggles to conceal my crime--all--all spared to me; for I should have
been asleep."

A curious doubting smile crossed his face slowly at these thoughts; and,
resting his cheek upon his hand, with the light full upon his face, he
gazed straight before him into vacancy.

"How do I know that?" he thought. "Could I, a self-murderer, assure
myself that I should have sunk into oblivion like that--into a restful
sleep, free from the cares I had been too cowardly to meet and bear?
No, no, no; it was not to be. Thank God! I was spared from that."

"But mine has been a cruel lot," he continued; "stroke after stroke that
would have been kinder had they killed; for the misery has not been mine
alone. I could have borne it better if it had been so. Poor Myra--poor
girl! Yours has been a strange fate, too."

And his thoughts were filled by her pain-wrung features, and wild,
appealing look last time they met, when she had clung to him there, and
appealed to him to forget the past, for she would forgive everything and
take him to her heart and face with him the whole world.

He shuddered.

"Poor, blind, loving heart! ready to kiss the hand wet with her
husband's blood." It was too horrible--too terrible to bear.

He hid his face in his hands for a few minutes, but grew calmer as he
went on reviewing the past; and from time to time a slight shiver ran
through him, as he thought of what he had done, and the mad plan he had
made to utterly conceal his crime by fire.

"But that's all past now," h