nk tape, evidently legal papers of
some sort; and also a pile of scrap-books containing newspaper clippings
to which Siward referred occasionally, or read them at length, resting
his thin, fatigued face between two bony hands.

The curious persistence of youth in his features seemed unaccountable in
view of the heavy marks imprinted there; but they were marks, not
lines; bluish hollows under eyes still young, marred contours of the
cheek-bone; a hardness about the hollow temples above which his short,
bright hair clustered with all its soft, youthful allure undimmed; and
in every movement, every turn of his head, there still remained much
of that indefinable attractiveness which had always characterised his
race--much of the unconscious charm usually known as breeding.

In men of Mortimer's fibre, dissipation produced coarser
symptoms--distended veins, and sagging flesh--where in Siward it seemed
to bruise and harden, driving the colour of blood out of him and leaving
the pallor of marble, and the bluish shadows of it staining the hollows.
Only the eyes had begun to change radically; something in them had been
quenched.

That he could never hope to become immune he had learned at last when
he had returned, physically wholesome, from his long course of training
under the famous Irish specialist on the Hudson. He had expected to be
immune, spite of the blunt and forcible language of Mulqueen when he
turned him out into the world again:

"Ye'll be afther notin'," said Mr. Mulqueen, "that a poonch in the
plexis putts a man out; but it don't kill him. That's you! Whin a man
mixes it up wid the booze, l'ave him come here an' I'll tache him a
thrick. But it's not murther I tache; it's the hook on the jaw that
shtops, an' the poonch in the plexis that putts the booze-divil on the
bum! L'ave him take the count; he'll niver rise to the chune o' the bell
av ye l'ave him lie. But he ain't dead, Misther Sayward; mark that, me
son! An' don't ye be afther sayin', 'Th' inimy is down an' out fur good!
Pore lad! Sure, I'll shake hands over a dhrink wid him, for he can do me
no hurrt anny more!' No, sorr! L'ave him lie, an' l'ave the years av ver
life count him out; fur the day you die, he dies, an' not wan shake o'
the mixer sooner! G'wan, now, fur the rub-down. Ye've faught yer lasht
round, if ye ain't a fool!"

He had been a fool. He had imagined that he could control himself, and
practise the moderation that other men practised w