came out in an incoherent burst, through savagely choked
tears. He had lost his honour. He was lowered in his own eyes. He would
never be able to respect himself again. The two men stared at all this,
wondering what lay behind it, until on a sudden the enigma became
clear to both of them. The man with the eyeglass laughed like a horse,
whinnying and neighing in mirth unrestrainable. Paul blundered blindly
at the door, but Pauer stepped nimbly and set his back against it.

'You young idiot!' he said in a friendly voice, which had a little
quiver in it which was not inspired by merriment.

Mr. George Darco continued to laugh until he rolled from his chair to
the floor. He rose gasping and weeping.

'Oh,' he said, 'vos there efer any think so vunny? Oh, somepoty holt me.
I shall tie of it.'

He recovered slowly, and seeing how deeply his laughter wounded the
object of it, he tried to look solemn, but broke out again. Pauer spoke
sharply to him in the foreign tongue he had used before, and he subdued
himself.

'Go back to your chair and sit down,' said Pauer, laying a hand on
Paul's shoulder. 'Don't make mountains out of molehills.'

The lad allowed himself to be pushed into a seat

'It's all very well for you, you glass-eyed old reprobate,' said Pauer,
speaking in English. 'I can understand the boy if you can't.'

'You!' gasped Darco, with a new spurt of laughter. 'You!'

'Yes,' said Pauer, 'I.' His tone was angry, and his friend, after a
humorous glance at him, poured out a glass of beer and drank it, but
said no more. 'Stay there till I come back, said Pauer a minute or so
later. 'I'll be back in a jiffy.'

Darco made a renewed onslaught on the cold boiled beef, as if he
had been famishing. Paul sat still and stared at the fire. He was a
compendium of shames, and whether he were more ashamed of his crime or
his confession he could not tell. Pauer came back, accompanied by a man
who looked like a hostler. The man carried a lighted candle and chewed
thoughtfully at a straw.

'You'd better go to bed now,' said Pauer. 'This man will show you the
way. When you're undressed, give him your clothes, and he'll have them
dried and brushed for you by morning.'

Paul obeyed, and when he had handed over his clothes to the hostler's
care he went to bed, and listened for awhile to the murmuring voices of
Pauer and Darco, who were now immediately beneath him. His last resolve
before he went to sleep was that in the morning