tactique.

"Good wine, rare wine, if it was n't so cold on the stomach," said the
old man, as he tossed off the second goblet. Already his eyes grew
wild and bloodshot, and his watery lip trembled. "To your good health,
gentlemen both," said he, as he finished the decanter. "I'm proud you
liked that last scene. It will be finer before I 've done with it; for
I intend to make the lava course down the mountain, and be seen fitfully
as the red glow of the eruption lights up the picture."

"With the bay and the fleet all seen in the distance, Tom," broke in
Stocmar.

"Just so, sir; the lurid glare--as the newspaper fellows will call
it--over all. Nothing like Bengal-lights and Roman-candles; they are
the poetry of the modern drama. Ah! sir, no sentiment without nitrate
of potash; no poetry if you have n't phosphorus." And with a drunken
laugh, and a leer of utter vacancy, the old man reeled from the room and
sought his den again.

"Good Heavens, Stocmar! what a misfortune!" cried Paten, as, sick with
terror, he dropped down into a chair.

"Never fret about it, Paul. That fellow will know nothing of what has
passed when he wakes to-morrow. His next drunken bout--and I 'll take
care it shall be a deep one--will let such a flood of Lethe over his
brain that not one single recollection will survive the deluge. You saw
why I produced the decanter?"

"Yes; it was cleverly done, and it worked like magic. But only think,
Stocmar, if any one had chanced to be here--it was pure chance that
there was not--and then--"

"Egad! it might have been as you say," said Stocmar; "there would have
been no stopping the old fellow; and had he but got the very slightest
encouragement, he had been off at score."

CHAPTER XXVI. A DARK REMEMBRANCE

On a sea like glass, and with a faint moonlight streaking the calm
water, the "Vivid," her Majesty's mail-packet, steamed away for Ostend.
There were very few passengers aboard, so that it was clearly from
choice two tall men, wrapped well up in comfortable travelling-cloaks,
continued to walk the deck, till the sandy headlands of Belgium could be
dimly descried through the pinkish gray of the morning. They smoked and
conversed as they paced up and down, talking in low, cautious tones, and
even entirely ceasing to speak when by any chance a passing sailor came
within earshot.

"It is, almost day for day, nine years since I crossed over here," said
one, "and certainly a bleaker future ne