you, all I was
capable of loving; but it was a love of self in the main.

"You know what took place at Taviton--the drunkenness, the degradation,
the disgrace. I was hooted out of the town, and I laid the blame to your
doors. I went away on the moors and tried to think of what I should do,
vowing vengeance on you all the time, yet never seeing how my vengeance
was to be wreaked. I returned to London, and stayed there some time in
hiding. No one knew where I was, save an old lawyer who had managed my
money affairs. One night I saw at Blackfriars Bridge the body of a dead
man. It had been washed on the steps, and left stranded there. It was
beyond recognition; evidently it had been in the water some time. I put
a letter of mine in the pocket of the dead man's clothes, and then
waited. Everything turned out as I expected. No one had any doubts. I
had committed suicide, and this was my body. I will not dwell any longer
on that; there is no need. I went away to the East. I did so of a set
purpose. I went away so that the world might forget me, and on the whole
it did forget me. But I did not forget. One purpose filled my mind and
heart; I will tell you what it was presently. I was a bad man when I
first saw you; bad with the veneer of respectability and pride.
Afterwards I became bad without that veneer. Think your worst about me,
you will not think too badly, save in one thing--I would conquer my
craving for drink. Nothing was possible if I did not do that. And I have
done that. Never since I left England, more than six years ago, has
alcohol ever passed my lips. I need not describe the hell in which I
lived, save to say that all the time I brooded over my dream of
vengeance on you. I determined that, as far as you and--Sprague were
concerned, there should be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I
told you years ago, that my faith in God was but little. During those
years I lived in the East, I learned to believe in a God; but it was a
God of terror, a God that seemed to consent to my dream of revenge.

"Sometimes I have thought I was mad. Perhaps I was, but it was a madness
which no one suspected, and it was a madness with a purpose. After I had
been away two years, I was able to render a service to the head of the
Great Tripoli Company. I need not describe how; but by a piece of good
fortune I saved, not only his life, but his honour. He also said that I
saved the fortunes of the great company. Be that as it may, th