y had burst up into him from the depths, and
he had seen, as in a flame of blinding light, a symbolical picture of
the future rising out of a dreadful past, and he had, without any act of
definite volition, marked down this man for a real account to be
settled.

"With _that_ man I shall have much to do," he said to himself, as he
noted the big face look up and meet his eye through the glass. "There is
something I cannot shirk--a vital relation out of the past of both of
us."

And he went to his desk trembling a little, and with shaking knees, as
though the memory of some terrible pain had suddenly laid its icy hand
upon his heart and touched the scar of a great horror. It was a moment
of genuine terror when their eyes had met through the glass door, and
he was conscious of an inward shrinking and loathing that seized upon
him with great violence and convinced him in a single second that the
settling of this account would be almost, perhaps, more than he could
manage.

The vision passed as swiftly as it came, dropping back again into the
submerged region of his consciousness; but he never forgot it, and
the whole of his life thereafter became a sort of natural though
undeliberate preparation for the fulfilment of the great duty when the
time should be ripe.

In those days--ten years ago--this man was the Assistant Manager,
but had since been promoted as Manager to one of the company's local
branches; and soon afterwards Jones had likewise found himself
transferred to this same branch. A little later, again, the branch
at Liverpool, one of the most important, had been in peril owing to
mismanagement and defalcation, and the man had gone to take charge of
it, and again, by mere chance apparently, Jones had been promoted to the
same place. And this pursuit of the Assistant Manager had continued for
several years, often, too, in the most curious fashion; and though Jones
had never exchanged a single word with him, or been so much as noticed
indeed by the great man, the clerk understood perfectly well that these
moves in the game were all part of a definite purpose. Never for one
moment did he doubt that the Invisibles behind the veil were slowly and
surely arranging the details of it all so as to lead up suitably to the
climax demanded by justice, a climax in which himself and the Manager
would play the leading _roles_.

"It is inevitable," he said to himself, "and I feel it may be terrible;
but when the moment comes