cheered by a bulldog, an ugly, faithful beast whom he called
Barabbas--he sighed to think how many Barabbases had lived and died since
then--and who, contracting mange, became the _corpus vile_ of many
experiments--first with the old man's emulsion, then with the emulsion
mixed with other drugs, all bound together in pure animal fat, until at
last he found a mixture which to his joy made the sores heal and the skin
harden and the hair sprout and Barabbas grow sleek as a swell mobsman in
affluent circumstances. Then one day came His Grace of Suffolk into the
shop with a story of a pet of the Duchess's stricken with the same disease.
Sypher modestly narrated his own experience and gave the mighty man a box
of the new ointment. A fortnight afterwards he returned. Not only had it
cured the dog, but it must have charmed away the eczema on his ducal hands.
Full of a wild surmise he tried it next on his landlady's child, who had a
sore on its legs, and lo! the sore healed. It was then that the Divine
Revelation came to him; it was then that he passed his vigil, as he had
told Zora, and consecrated himself and his Cure to the service of humanity.

The steps, the struggles, the purchase of the chemist's business, the early
exploitation of the Cure, its gradual renown in the district, the first
whisperings of its fame abroad, thanks to His Grace of Suffolk, the early
advertising, the gradual growth, the sale of the chemist's business, the
establishment of "Sypher's Cure" as a special business in the town, the
transference to London, the burst into world-wide fame--all the memories
came back to him, as he sat by the window of the Hotel de l'Europe and
blinded his face with his hands.

He dashed them away, at last, with a passionate gesture.

"It can't be! It can't be!" he cried aloud, as many another man has cried
in the righteous rebellion of his heart against the ironical decrees of the
high gods whom his simple nature has never suspected of their eternal and
inscrutable irony.

CHAPTER XV

If you travel on the highroad which skirts the cliff-bound coast of
Normandy you may come to a board bearing the legend "Hottetot-sur-Mer" and
a hand pointing down a narrow gorge. If you follow the direction and
descend for half a mile you come to a couple of villas, a humble cafe, some
fishermen's cottages, one of which is also a general shop and a _debit de
tabac_, a view of a triangle of sea, and eventually to a patch of shingly