did. And now I am plucked up from my place and planted here beside

him, as soiled in the eyes of the world as he! Is it because I was the instrument of his demoralisation that the tables have now been turned?--because he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword? And in the last great evening-up, is it written that I shall become even as he?--that bars and chains shall have their will of me and I emerge at last, like this incorrigible _ruine_, hard, debased, besotted, beyond hope or redemption in the world?" He shuddered. Better even that that shot in the library had gone home--that he now lay, innocent as he was, with the red mark on his throat, down in the horrible quick-lime!

He rose, and with his hands gripping the bars of the open door, drew a long breath. No! whatever this pent-house did to him, it should never drag him down! He would take his medicine. For what, in his egregious folly and egotism, he had done, he would pay--if fate demanded, to the uttermost farthing. But out of its prison his soul, sometime, should come unblanched, and unabashed!