g thing,' Purvis said, 'and will require all my strength;'
and he announced his intention of remaining hidden in Rosario for a few
weeks while he rested completely. But his chronic inability to sleep
made rest impossible. He was calculating and adding up figures during
the watches of the night, and his strange, light-coloured eyes, with
the constant tear in them, became paler in colour and more suggestive
of bad nerves. He began to find his calculations difficult to balance,
and he even made some mistakes in his long rows of figures. The thing
worried him and he began to wonder if his head were going. He had
always overcome difficulties and had fought dangers with an absolute
belief in his own success. He was unscrupulous and cunning, but he had
never been beaten yet. It was horrible that sleep was the thing that
he could not command; but, alas! the exercise of will-power is not the
force by which sleep can be induced, and a placid or submissive mind
was unknown to Purvis. His wife watched him anxiously. She would go
for long walks with him in the early dawn or after it was dark, hoping
that the fresh air and the cooler weather might bring some sort of
repose to the wide-open pale eyes; but no sleep came, and Purvis took
to swallowing more tabloids, and setting out his rows of figures in a
nervous way, while his hand trembled and his plaintive voice became
irritable, and his eyes watered more than they were wont to do.

He had money in hand, and it was some sort of comfort to his wife to be
able to purchase for him the nourishing food which he required. She
had often been in sore straits for money herself, but she believed,
with pathetic conviction, that a woman can do with fewer comforts than
a man can, and she had never felt deprivations for herself so much as
she would have felt them for her husband. She cooked tempting dishes
for him, and enjoyed his companionship, and asked no questions. She
even allowed herself the purchase of a few new clothes now that money
was plentiful again, and these days, even with the anxiety of her
husband's ill-health hanging over her, were not by any means the
unhappiest of her life.

'I shan't be able to pull this business through,' said Purvis one
night, 'unless I sleep, and I can't live unless I succeed with it.'

He made his wife write innumerable letters for him in her own
handwriting, and signed with an entirely new name. But it was
difficult to transact these busin