ollow it until I am
gray.'

VIII

It would appear that a spider may be among the most daring, skilful, and
predatory of his species, that he may be gifted with the most constant
watchfulness and appetite, and yet, whether by the intrusion of
an accidental walking-stick or broom (which would assuredly seem
providential to the fly), or by stress of weather, or the desperate
activity of a victim, may have his best laid schemes brought to
nought, and his most mathematically laid web rent to tatters. In the
entomological world a solitary interview between fly and spider is
usually fatal to the one, and satisfactory to the other. But we of the
higher developments, who model ourselves, or are modelled, upon the
lines of myriads of remote ancestors, and far-away relatives, have
refined upon their primitive proceedings, and have made their simple
activities complex by development.

In an absolutely primitive condition the Steinberg spider would have
drained the Barter fly at a single orgie, and would have left him to
wither on the lines. As things were, he came back to him with a constant
gusto of appetite, tasting him on Monday, despatching him to buzz among
his fellows until Saturday, and then tasting him again, the Barter fly
seeming for a while--for quite a considerable time in fact--lusty and
active and able-bodied, and looking as though this kind of thing might
go on for ever without much damage to him, and the spider himself giving
no sign of overtaxed digestive powers.

Not to run this striking and original simile out of breath, the Barter
fly endured for a round twelve months, without showing signs of anaemia
so pronounced as to look dangerous to his constitution. At the end of
that time, however, all the surplus blood had been drawn from his body,
and the spider had grown so keen by the habit of constant recurrence to
him that any prolonged connection between them began to look desperate.
In plain English, the eight thousand pounds which had once so lightly
passed from the hands of Mr. Brown to the hands of Mr. Bommaney had now
passed, with just as little profit to the man who parted with them, from
the hands of young Barter to the hands of Steinberg.

It was just about the time when this lingering but inevitable
transaction was completed that chance led young Barter to his encounter
with the son of the man whose belongings he had appropriated. Everybody
knows how apt newly-made acquaintances sometimes are