"Don't know, my dear fellow, except that one gets to like, or like the brute after a time. Why, man," and Hawkshawe rose and began to pace the room, "what have we got to live for in this infernal country? You rot here--_rot_, I say--and your mind and your body both go to ooze and slime. Books! One can't read in this climate. The blue mould covers them up, as it has covered me, and as it will cover you and many a better man yet, and you will be as I am." Hawkshawe filled his glass and drank to the dregs. It seemed as if he were toasting the success of his hideous prophecy. "_And you will be as I am!_" The words hit Jackson like a life sentence. He looked at the man before him, at the promise in the high aquiline features and still, clear eyes, and then he saw the little crowsfeet round the eyelids, the puffy cheeks and trembling hands, and shuddered. No! It would never come to that with him. But a dread rose in his heart. What, after all, if he was wrong in his thoughts of his strength? Hawkshawe looked to him with a strange light in his eyes. "Come," he said, "let me show you what it is like." It was evident that Hawkshawe was determined, with a half-drunken persistence, to continue a subject that was more than unpleasant to his guest, and there was only one course open to Jackson, and that was to get away as quietly as possible. "I don't think I will venture," he replied, "and, at the risk of offending you, I must ask you to excuse me for to-night. One always has a lot to do on first coming to a place, and I am no exception to the rule. No, not any more, thank you, to-night; but I will have another of those cheroots, if I may." "I suppose if wilful will, then wilful must, but you are losing a new experience," said Hawkshawe, as he accompanied his guest to the door. He there found that Peregrine was going to walk home. "Let me order my trap for you, or a pony, if you prefer to ride?" he asked. "No, thanks, Hawkshawe; there is a bright moon, and I know my way perfectly. I go to plan the suppression of Bah Hmoay. Goodnight!" The hard gravel crunched under his firm footsteps as he walked down the drive. Hawkshawe stood looking after him. "He knows his way, he says. I wish I knew mine. Mr. Peregrine Jackson strikes me as rather a cold-blooded prig. I never could stand that sort of fellow--no," and, as if to keep his heart up, he sang: "Pass the bowl, the merry, merry bowl, Let it brim with good red wine. I have pledged my soul To the merry, merry bowl, And the ruby light of wine."