beheld a halo.
Clearly this was his day; heaven showed its approval of his conduct by
an outpouring of imperishable riches. And yet the oath misliked him;
there was a savor of the demoniacal contract; still that was to be
borne and the plunge taken, for there fluttered the huge sum before his
dazzled eyes. He took a deep breath. "'God strike me dead' "--he began,
slowly--"' if I ever '--"

"No. 'And condemn me to the everlasting flames of hell '--"

"Have I got to?"

"Yes."--"'And condemn me to--to the everlasting flames of--of hell, if
I ever tell!'"

He ran off, pale with the fear that he might grow up, take to drink and
some day tell in his cups, but so resolved not to coquet with temptation
that he went round a block to avoid the door of the Rouen House bar.
Nevertheless, the note was in his hand and the fortune in his pocket.

And Mr. Carewe was safe. He knew that the boy would never tell, and he
knew another thing, for he had read the Journal, though it came no more
to his house: he knew that Tom Vanrevel wore his uniform that evening,
and that, even in the dusk, the brass buttons on an officer's breast
make a good mark for a gun steadied along the ledge of a window. As he
entered the gates and went toward the house he glanced up at the window
which overlooked his garden from the cupola.

CHAPTER XVIII. The Uniform

Crailey was not the only man in Rouen who had been saying to himself all
day that each accustomed thing he did was done for the last time. Many
of his comrades went about with "Farewell, old friend," in their hearts,
not only for the people, but for the usual things of life and the
actions of habit, now become unexpectedly dear and sweet to know or
to perform. So Tom Vanrevel, relieved of his hot uniform, loose as to
collar, wearing a big dressing-gown, and stretched in a chair, watched
the sunset from the western window of the dusty office, where he had
dreamed through many sun-sets in summers past, and now took his leave
of this old habit of his in silence, with a long cigar, considering the
chances largely against his ever seeing the sun go down behind the long
wooden bridge at the foot of Main Street again.

The ruins of the warehouses had been removed, and the river was laid
clear to his sight; it ran between brown banks like a river of rubies,
and, at the wharf, the small evening steamboat, ugly and grim enough
to behold from near by, lay pink and lovely in that broad glow, tooting