hide in its dingy solitudes whilst he had but a mere shilling a
day for lodging and bodily sustenance elsewhere.

Hornett led the way up a set of narrow and broken stairs, and having
reached the uppermost story of the house, pushed open a broken door,
which, depending from a single hinge, scratched, noisily upon the uneven
flooring of the room. His guest stood shivering in the doorway until a
match sputtered and fizzed in Hornett's fingers. Then, guided by that
precarious light, he advanced. Hornett lit a candle which adhered by its
own grease to the filthy wall and had already made a great cone of smoke
with a tremulous outline there. There was a small grate, with a mere
double-handful of shavings, chips, and coal behind its rusty bars.
Hornett applied the match to the shavings, and, as the fire leapt up,
the two men knelt together, coughing and choking in the smoke, and
bathing their chilled hands in the flame. Bommaney drew the flat bottle
from a pocket hidden somewhere in his multitudinous rags, and drank.
Hornett watched him greedily, with hands involuntarily and unconsciously
extended. Then when he had drunk in turn, they each shivered over
the fire again, stealing furtive glances at each other, each mightily
disconcerted when he met the other's eye. Bommaney had aged dreadfully
during his year of hiding, and Hornett, who had drunk his employer's
health upon his birthdays often enough to know his age to a day, could
yet scarce believe that the dreadful spectre who knelt beside him
numbered less than fourscore years.

One question perplexed Hornett's mind. How came it, he asked himself
over and over again, that in the space of a mere twelvemonths a man who
started with at least eight thousand pounds could have fallen into such
a depth of poverty? Eight thousand pounds, if absolutely nothing were
done with it for its own increase, meant royal living for a score
of years for an unencumbered man. Hornett longed to satisfy his own
curiosity upon this point, and felt as if he dared not ask the question
for his life. He framed a score of ways by which he might approach
it, with a road of retreat behind him, and at last, as if in spite of
himself, he said, with apologetic impudence,

'You don't seem to have made the money last long, sir.'

'The money,' cried Bommaney, turning furiously upon him. 'What money?'

Hornett edged away upon his knees, and his thumb and fingers traced the
creases of his smile up and down his