on as his wife was in, Mr. Quest watched his opportunity.
Slipping up to the dark carriage, he opened and shut the door as
quietly as possible and took his seat in the gloom.

The engine whistled, there was a cry of "right forrard," and they were
off.

Presently he saw the woman stand up in her division of the compartment
and peep over into the gloom.

"Not a blessed soul," he heard her mutter, "and yet I feel as though
that devil Billy was creeping about after me. Ugh! it must be the
horrors. I can see the look he gave me now."

A few minutes later the train stopped at a station, but nobody got in,
and presently it moved on again. "Any passengers for Effry?" shouted
the porter, and there had been no response. If they did not stop at
Effry there would be no halt for forty minutes. Now was his time. He
waited a little till they had got up the speed. The line here ran
through miles and miles of fen country, more or less drained by dykes
and rivers, but still wild and desolate enough. Over this great flat
the storm was sweeping furiously--even drowning in its turmoil the
noise of the travelling train.

Very quietly he rose and climbed over the low partition which
separated his compartment from that in which the woman was. She was
seated in the corner, her head leaning back, so that the feeble light
from the lamp fell on it, and her eyes were closed. She was asleep.

He slid himself along the seat till he was opposite to her, then
paused to look at the fierce wicked face on which drink and paint and
years of evil-thinking and living had left their marks, and looking
shuddered. There was his bad genius, there was the creature who had
driven him from evil to evil and finally destroyed him. Had it not
been for her he might have been a good and respected man, and not what
he was now, a fraudulent ruined outcast. All his life seemed to flash
before his inner eye in those few seconds of contemplation, all the
long weary years of struggle, crime, and deceit. And this was the end
of it, and /there/ was the cause of it. Well, she should not escape
him; he would be revenged upon her at last. There was nothing but
death before /him/, she should die too.

He set his teeth, drew the loaded pistol from his pocket, cocked it
and lifted it to her breast.

What was the matter with the thing? He had never known the pull of a
pistol to be so heavy before.

No, it was not /that/. He could not do it. He could not shoot a
sleeping wo