want, gaffer?" he asked, without removing his pipe from
his mouth. "Cursed if I can see what you're driving at, or any of us,
for that matter."

"What is it I want?" he cried passionately. "The life of my betrayer, or
such a mark of my vengeance as will make her rue the day she sent one of
your Order to work out his life, a miserable captive, in a prison cell.
Is it not clear what I want? Speak, all of you! Do you grudge me this
thing? Do you hesitate?"

The vendor of ice cream constituted himself the spokesman of the little
party. He knocked the dead ashes from his pipe, and leisurely refilled
it. The little old man at the bottom of the table was shaking with
anxiety. The thunderbolt quivered in the air.

"That's all bally rot, you know, guv'nor," he said calmly. "We ain't
murderers here! This White Hyacinth crew as you're a-talking of must a
been a blood-thirsty lot o' chaps. We ain't on that track. We meets here
just for a drop and a smoke, sociable like, with our friend the
Professor, and forms a sort of a club like among hourselves. You've come
to the wrong shop!"

The man's words, blunt and unfeeling, answered their purpose well. They
left no possibility of doubt or misunderstanding. The Count, after a
moment's wild stare around, tottered, and sank into a chair. All that
had seemed strange to him was suddenly clear. His head fell upon his
arms, and he crouched there motionless. The hopes of five-and-twenty
years were wrecked. The spark which had left him alive had died out! The
Order of the White Hyacinth was no more!

There was a distinct and terrible pathos in the scene. Even those rough,
coarse men, casting uneasy glances at that white, bowed head and
crouching figure at the head of the table, and listening to his low
moaning, were conscious of a vague pity. They thought of him as of some
wandering lunatic who had strayed in upon them; and, indeed, none of
them, except the Professor, doubted but that he was mad.

He looked up at last, and the ice-cream vendor, who was not a bad sort
at heart, poured out a mugful of the unwholesome-looking beer, and
pushed it across the table toward him.

"Here, guv'nor, drink this," he said gruffly; "it'll do you good. Cheer
up, old buck! I should. What's done can't be undone, and what's dead
can't be brought to life again. Make the best of it, I say. You've got
some of the ready left, I'll go bail, and you ain't too old to get a bit
out o' life yet--if yer make haste.