e! What the devil now?' I ran in to Lady Tybar and
we hurried round. We were scared for him, I tell you. And we'd reason to
be--when we got there and found him."

CHAPTER VII

I

When that cab which Hapgood had despatched after Sabre from the
coroner's court overtook its quest, the driver put himself abreast of
the distracted figure furiously hobbling along the road and, his second
pound note in view, began, in a fat and comfortable voice, a beguiling
monologue of "Keb, sir? Keb? Keb? Keb, sir?"

Sabre at first gave no attention. Farther along he once angrily waved
his stick in signal of dismissal. About a mile along his disabled knee,
and all his much overwrought body refused longer to be the flogged slave
of his tumultuous mind. He stopped in physical exhaustion and rested
upon his stick. The cabman also stopped and tuned afresh his enticing
and restful rhythm: "Keb, sir? Keb? Keb? Keb, sir?"

He got in.

He did not think to give a direction, but the driver had his directions;
nor, when he was set down at his house, to make payment; but payment had
been made. The driver assisted him from the cab and into his door--and
he needed assistance--and being off his box set himself to the
adjustment of a buckle, repair of which he had deferred through the day
until (being a man economical of effort) some other circumstance should
necessitate his coming to earth.

Sabre stumbled into his house and pushed the door behind him with a
resolution expressive of his desire to shut away from himself all
creatures of the world and be alone,--be left entirely alone. By habit
he climbed the stairs to his room. He collapsed into a chair.

His head was not aching; but there throbbed within his head, ceaselessly
and enormously, a pulse that seemed to shake him at its every beat. It
was going knock, knock, knock! He began to have the feeling that if this
frightful knocking continued it would beat its way out. Something would
give way. Amidst the purposeful reverberations, his mind, like one
squeezed back in the dark corner of a lair of beasts, crouched shaking
and appalled. He was the father of Effie's child; he was the murderer of
Effie and of her child! He was neither; but the crimes were fastened
upon him as ineradicable pigment upon his skin. His skin was white but
it was annealed black; there was not a glass of the mirrors of his past
actions but showed it black and reflected upon it hue that was blacker
yet. He was a bet