is--_his_ case, a ghastly pallor overspreads his face,
and it is with difficulty he suppresses a groan. He controls himself,
however, and listens eagerly for what may follow.

"Do you mean to tell me I am bound to keep a depraved drunkard beneath
my roof?" demands Sir Christopher, vehemently. "A fellow who insults my
guests, who--"

"The fact that he has contracted this miserable habit of which you speak
is only another reason why you should think _well_ before you discard
him now, in his old age," says Fabian, with increasing earnestness. "He
will starve--die in a garret or by the wayside, if you fling him off. He
is not in a fit state to seek another livelihood. Who would employ him?
And you he has served faithfully for years--twenty years, I think; and
of all the twenty only three or four have been untrustworthy. You should
think of that, Christopher. He was your right hand fur a long time,
and--and he has done neither you nor yours a real injury."

Here the unhappy figure in the doorway raises his hand and beats his
clenched fist in a half-frantic, though silent, manner against his
forehead.

"You are bound, I think," says Fabian, in the same calm way, "to look
after him, to bear with him a little."

"_You_ defend him!" exclaims Sir Christopher, irritably, "yet I believe
that in his soul he hates you--would do you a harm if he could. It is
his treatment of _you_ at times," says Sir Christopher, coming at last
to the real germ of the danger he is cherishing against Slyme,
"that--that-- Remember what he said only last week about you."

"Tut!" says Fabian, "I remember nothing. He was drunk, no doubt, and
said what he did not mean."

"I believe he did mean it. _In vino veritas._"

"Well, even so; if he does believe in the story that has blasted my
life, why"--with a sigh--"so do many others. I don't think the poor old
fellow would really work me any mischief, but I doubt I have been harsh
to him at times, have accused him somewhat roughly, I dare say, of his
unfortunate failing; and for that, it may be, he owes me a grudge.
Nothing more. His bark is worse than his bite. It is my opinion,
Christopher, that underneath his sullen exterior there lurks a great
deal of good."

The trembling figure in the doorway is growing more and more bowed. It
seems now as if it would gladly sink into the earth through very shame.
His hand has left the curtain and is now clinging to the lintel of the
door, as though anxious of m