Slowly he made partition of the large from the small coals; regretfully he acknowledged the presence of the lesser bits as, with a chuckle of greedy appreciation, he grouped the relative piles.

"Ha, ha! ha, ha! ha, ha!" What a laugh! What a frightful mockery of mirth! "Ha, ha! ha, ha!" and raising both hands above his head he brought them down upon the table with the lax inertia of utter collapse, and fell forward upon his extended arms, his face buried in the squalid heap beneath.

For a dreary hour he lay there without the twitch of a muscle, the well of a sigh.

Like a Cyclop's eye the button at the bottom of the concave in the wall seemed to stare with wonder upon this unfamiliar Raikes, who could thus permit the radiator to swing open so heedlessly, and the inner recess to expose its golden glut.

Suddenly there came a sharp rap upon the door, then a pause; but its quick reverberations were unheeded by the prostrate man.

Again the thuds were administered to the echoing panels, and still no response.

"Uncle, I say, uncle!" cried a man's voice. "Uncle!" and the shout was followed by a vigorous kick upon the woodwork; "Uncle! Uncle!"

At this last appeal Raikes stirred uneasily, and as the assault was continued with still greater stress, he managed finally to stagger uncertainly to his feet.

As he raised his head to listen to the clamor without, the meanness of his face, emphasized by the smudges of the coal in which it had so recently reposed, presented itself to the scandalized eye in the wall.

The miserable creature depicted the last degree of absurdity, and yet the ugly pathos of it all would have moved to pity.

"Uncle, I say!" and at the sound of the voice, which he recognized as that of his lusty nephew, Raikes, with a return of his accustomed intelligence, which had received its kindly repairs at the hands of nature during his brief coma, cried sharply: "Well, well!"

"Ah!" exclaimed the voice outside with an unmistakable accent of relief in its tone as it added, with unlettered eagerness: "It's me--Bob!"

However, if his reawakened animation had revived his deadened spirit, it also restored the appreciation of his disaster, as, with a glance of vivid comprehension, he looked from the coal heap to the register, toward which he leaped with astonishing agility.

In an instant the inner recess was secure; in another the radiator was replaced, and Raikes, proceeding to the door, raised the bar, unlocked the catches and exclaimed, "Enter!"

As the breezy Bob crossed the threshold, the question of his eyes was instantly transformed to an expression of utter astonishment as he beheld the extraordinary blend of soil and pallor upon the countenance of his uncle.

"For the Lord's sake!" he cried, "what ails your face?" and strongly tempted to laugh at the absurd spectacle, and as urgently impelled to restrain himself by the glittering eyes of the raging Raikes, he added, by way of apology for his noisy intrusion:

"We knew that you were in here, but could not make you hear us. You are almost two hours beyond your usual time."

Directly in the rear of the young man stood the spinster, who gazed with widened eyes and parted lips upon her brother's soiled visage.

"Well," snarled Raikes, "I am all right, you see; now leave me until I get myself in shape to make an appearance."

As the door closed behind the pair, Raikes hurried to the mirror, and above the crack which extended, like a spasm, diagonally across its surface he beheld his bloodless cheeks and forehead, and below, the dry slit of his mouth and his chin spattered with black and white.

As he witnessed the sorry sight, the unhappy man, unable for the moment to account for his plight, stood aghast, until his gaze, penetrating to the rear of his smudged physiognomy, beheld the reflection of the coal heaps upon the table.

At once a savage grin distorted his features into the degree of ugliness not already accomplished by its dusky resting place of the hour previous. A grin that was scarcely human and almost diabolical, as if the miserable creature had caught sight of the shriveled soul peering through the chinks which imprisoned his rat eyes and found a malignant enjoyment in the contemplation of its contemptible littleness.

From this debasing inspection Raikes turned slowly to the washstand to remove the grime from his face, with an impersonal deliberation that was not only unnatural under the circumstances, but which awakened the eerie suggestion that he was expending his effort upon another than himself.

From this moment he became strangely calm; the sharp decision of his lips was never so pronounced.

A baleful, unwavering gleam distinguished his glance. He had evidently arrived at some determination, one that levied upon the last limit of his endurance.

All that day the unhappy man sat in his room, sullen and pondering.

The timid offers of nourishment made by his sister were either ignored or refused with such an ill grace that she finally forbore further overtures and left him to his morose reflections, to improve her opportunities of enjoying, unrebuked, the privileges of the table, until, by nightfall, an indigestion, which she welcomed on account of its occasion, disturbed her with its unfamiliar pangs.

In response to his nephew's concern as to his condition Raikes replied by saying: "I may have something to tell you by eleven o'clock to-night; will you be on hand?"

"Sure!" answered Bob with breezy goodwill.

From time to time Raikes glanced at the clock.

His last scrutiny had revealed the hour of nine. Sixty interminable minutes more remained ere he could see the Sepoy.

Slowly the leaden hands crawled over the indifferent face.

At last the half hour struck.

A strange impatience possessed him.

Perhaps the Sepoy might begin a little earlier than usual. He could, at least, suggest such a courtesy by his precipitation; it was far better than this unendurable wait.

With this anticipation he decided to proceed to the apartment of this singular narrator.

After taking his usual precautions, which seemed more or less of a mockery in view of the succession of disasters which had overtaken him, and again establishing the spinster in a position where she could maintain an unobstructed view of the entrance to his room, Raikes proceeded hurriedly along the various passageways, which finally concluded in his point of destination.

He rapped gently upon the door, which he discovered to be slightly ajar.

There was no response.

His second attempt to attract attention was pronounced enough to urge the door aside and enable him to make a comprehensive survey of the interior.

It was unoccupied; and of his last assault upon the panel the only recognition was a sullen echo in the hallway.

About to retire, his glance fell upon the table in the center of the room.

At once a sudden trembling seized him.

A burning fever surged through his veins; an irresistible impulse overwhelmed; for there, in inconceivable negligence, lay the shagreen case which he had so reluctantly returned to its owner only the night before.

And then--the malign agreement of his outward husk with his inner degradation was revealed.

His eyes, already criminal, reflected the kaleidoscopic succession of temptation and surrender; desire and thievery.

He scanned the passageway without in either direction.

No one was in sight.

A silence of respectable retirement prevailed that enabled him to hear his heartbeats almost, which surged along his veins to his ears and stifled the final gasp of the still, small voice within.

The next instant, with a lithe animal leap of astonishing quickness, Raikes, darting into the apartment, grasped the precious case and retreated as rapidly over the threshold.