t of a
face the quack makes when he takes his medicine to-morrow."

He threw the iron weight into the water, entered the cabin, took another
drink, smiled contemptuously at the drunken wretches under the table,
crossed the deck, descended the gang-plank and climbed the steep path to
the city.

Against his inheritance from such a nature as this, the young mystic had
to make his life struggle.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SHADOW OF DEATH

"There are moral as well as physical assassinations."--Voltaire.

When he awoke the next morning, the poor bedeviled doctor crawled back
to the hotel as best he could, his head throbbing with pain, his wits
dull and his temper wild. Stumbling up the long flight of stairs which
seemed to him to reach the sky, he burst open his door and entered the
room. It was empty. The bed had not been occupied. Pepeeta was nowhere
to be seen.

It took him some moments to comprehend that he did not comprehend. Then
he called, "Pepeeta! Pepeeta!"

The silence at first bewildered, then aroused hims and crossing the
corridor he entered David's room. It, too, was empty. He was now
thoroughly astonished and awake. Recrossing the hall he once more
entered his room and began in earnest to seek an explanation of this
mystery. It did not take him long, for on the table were lying the
jewels in which he had invested his profits and which he had confided to
Pepeeta--and beside them a piece of paper on which he slowly spelled out
these startling words:

"I have discovered your treachery and fled."

"PEPEETA."

He drew his hand across his eyes, took a piece of his cheek between his
thumb and first finger and pinched it to see if he were awake, then read
the words again, this time aloud: "I have discovered your treachery and
fled. Pepeeta." "Treachery?" he said. "What t-t-treachery? Whose
t-t-treachery? Fled? Fled with whom, fled where? I wonder if I am still
d-d-drunk?"

Laying the paper down, he went to the wash-stand, filled the bowl with
water, plunged his head into it and expected to find that he had been
suffering some sort of hallucination. But when he returned to the table
and again took up the missive, the same words stared him in the face.

At last, and almost with the rapidity of a stroke of lightning, the
whole mystery solved itself. It flashed upon his mind that Pepeeta had
abandoned him, and in company with the man he had so implicitly trusted.
The serpent he had nourished in his b