sleep of the unjust. One imagined that he must be snoring,
for an incredibly small urchin in a blue apron stood on the path before
him and watched with the open mouth of astonishment.

Ste. Marie turned back into the room, and began to tramp up and down as
was his way in a perplexity or in any time of serious thought. He wished
very much that Richard Hartley were there to consult with. He considered
Hartley to have a judicial mind--a mind to establish, out of confusion,
something like logical order, and he was very well aware that he himself
had not that sort of mind at all. In action he was sufficiently
confident of himself, but to construct a course of action he was afraid,
and he knew that a misstep now, at this critical point, might be
fatal--turn success into disaster.

He fell to thinking of Captain Stewart (alias M. Ducrot) and he longed
most passionately to leap into a fiacre at the corner below, to drive at
a gallop across the city to the rue du Faubourg St. Honore, to fall upon
that smiling hypocrite in his beautiful treasure-house, to seize him by
the withered throat and say:

"Tell me what you have done with Arthur Benham before I tear your head
from your miserable body!"

Indeed, he was far from sure that this was not what it would come to, in
the end, for he reflected that he had not only a tremendous accumulation
of evidence with which to face Captain Stewart, but also a very terrible
weapon to hold over his head--the threat of exposure to the old man who
lay slowly dying in the rue de l'Universite! A few words in old David's
ear, a few proofs of their truth, and the great fortune for which the
son had sold his soul--if he had any left to sell--must pass forever out
of his reach, like gold seen in a dream.

This is what it might well come to, he said to himself. Indeed, it
seemed to him at that moment far the most feasible plan, for to such
accusations, such demands as that, Captain Stewart could offer no
defence. To save himself from a more complete ruin he would have to give
up the boy or tell what he knew of him. But Ste. Marie was unwilling to
risk everything on this throw without seeing Richard Hartley first, and
Hartley was not to be had until evening.

He told himself that, after all, there was no immediate hurry, for he
was quite sure the man would be compelled to keep to his bed for a day
or two. He did not know much about epilepsy, but he knew that its
paroxysms were followed by great exha