I 'll give you a chance," said Frobisher; "double or quit that
they hang him."

"No, no; I 've lost enough on him. I 'll not have it."

"Well, I suppose we've nothing to wait for now," yawned Jennings. "Shall
we start?"

"Not till we have luncheon, I vote," cried an infantry sub.; and his
suggestion met general approval. And while they are seated at a table
where exquisite meats and rarest wines stimulated appetite and provoked
excess, let us turn for a few brief moments to him who, still their
entertainer, sat in his lone chamber, friendless and deserted.

So rapid had been the succession of events which occupied one single
night, that Roland could not believe it possible months had not
passed over. Even then, he found it difficult to disentangle the real
circumstances from those fancied results his imagination had already
depicted; many of the true incidents appearing far more like fiction
than the dreamy fancies his mind invented. His meeting with Enrique, for
instance, was infinitely less probable than that he should have fought
a duel with Linton; and so, in many other cases, his faculties
wavered between belief and doubt, till his very senses reeled with the
confusion. Kennyfeck's death alone stood out from this chaotic mass,
clear, distinct, and palpable, and, as he sat brooding over this
terrible fact, he was totally unconscious of its bearing upon his own
fortunes. Selfishness formed no part of his nature; his fault lay in
the very absence of self-esteem, and the total deficiency of that
individuality which prompts men to act up to a self-created standard.
He could sorrow for him who was no more, and from whom he had received
stronger proofs of devotion than from all his so-called friends; he
could grieve over the widowed mother and the fatherless girls, for
whose destitution he felt, he knew not how, or wherefore, a certain
culpability; but of himself and his own critical position, not a thought
arose. The impressions that no effort of his own could convey fell with
a terrific shock upon him when suggested by another.

He was seated at his table, trying, for the twentieth time, to collect
his wandering thoughts, and determine what course to follow, when a tap
was heard at his door, and it opened at the same instant.

"I am come, sir," said Mr. Goring, with a voice full of feeling, "to
bring you sad tidings; but for which events may have, in a measure,
prepared you." He paused, perhaps hoping that Cashel