honour"? Just this, he, Laurence
Stanninghame, would at that moment be lying a lifeless thing, with
brains scattered all over the room--a memory, a standing monument of
commonplace weakness. But she had saved him from this--had saved him as
surely and completely as though she had struck the weapon from his hand.
Was it for good or for ill?

He fell thinking again. Had he indeed played his last card, or did one
more solitary trump yet lurk up his sleeve unknown to himself? No, it
could not be; and his thoughts grew dark again. Yet he was safe
now--safe from himself. Lilith had done it--her influence, her love!

He thought long and thought hard, but still hopelessly. And again,
unconsciously, he broke out into soliloquy.

"Yes, I'd sell my soul to the devil himself!"

"Maybe the old man would be dead off the deal. Likely he reckons you a
dead cert. already, Stanninghame."

Laurence did not start at the voice, which was that of Hazon, whose
shadow darkened the door. The up-country man at that moment especially
noticed that he did not.

"Dare say you're right, Hazon," was the reply. "That's it, come in,"
which the other had already done. "Talking out loud, was I? It's a d----
bad habit, and grows on one."

"It does. Say, though, what game were you up to with that plaything?"
glancing meaningly at the six-shooter lying on the table.

"This? Oh, I thought likely it wanted cleaning."

"So?" and the corners of Hazon's saturnine mouth drooped in ever so
faint a grin as his keen eyes fixed themselves for a moment full upon
the other's face. Laurence had forgotten the tell-tale imprint left in
the centre of his forehead by the muzzle. "So? See here, Stanninghame,
don't be at the trouble to invent any more sick old lies, but put the
thing away. It might go off. Don't mind me; I've been through the same
stage myself."

"Have you? How did it feel, eh?" said Laurence, with a sort of weary
imperturbability, filling his pipe and pushing the pouch across the
table to his friend.

"Bad. Ah, that's right! Instead of fooling about 'cleaning' guns at
such times, fill your pipe. That's the right lay, depend upon it."

Laurence made no reply, but lighting up, puffed away in silence. His
thoughts were wandering from Hazon.

"Broke, eh?" queried the latter sententiously.

"Stony."

"So? Ah, I knew it'd come; I knew it'd come."

This remark, redolent as it was of that sort of cheap prophecy which
consists of being wise after