In the meantime Alban Hawkshawe slipped down with frightful rapidity. He was like a man sliding down a snowy slope beneath which yawned a precipice, and he was reaching the abyss at a frightful pace. He would have killed himself had he dared; once he had almost done so, but the little hole in the muzzle of the revolver he held to his mouth looked so pitiless that he drew it back shrinking. His nerves were weakened, and there was a terrible bodily fear of that death which he felt could alone be his release. It was open to him to have left Pazobin and run the chance of arrest; but the very attempt at flight would establish his guilt, and he was quick-witted enough to see that his only chance was to fight, and, although the waters were over him, yet his arm was stretched out to grasp the one little straw in which there might be safety. Strange as it may seem, he began to feel an injured man. There was the shame and indignity of being kept a prisoner at large, to feel that every one around him knew of his fall, to know that they knew him guilty, to know that they who crouched before him formerly were laughing over their opium pipes at his downfall. The very servants knew it. He saw this in their faces. These thoughts drove him faster and faster on his course, and he vainly tried to flee from himself in the stupor of drink. And then the time came when drink did not produce forgetfulness. But Ma Mie clung to him with the affection of a dog. She endured his abuse and his blows, for Hawkshawe had reached a stage when he was no longer restrained from violence because the object was a woman. The poor creature tried to keep him from his besetting vice; she brought out all her little arts which were once wont to please and to beguile, but to no purpose. Hawkshawe insisted on having her about him, but it was not to console; it was because he wanted some one upon whom to work off the fits of semi-madness that came on him. His servants fled in terror, and after a time he began to feel that he could not bear to be alone. His excited brain conjured up strange images about him, and finally the wild beast within the man awoke in its full strength, and he was no longer a human being, but had gone back to that early time when man was as savage as a tiger is now. It seemed as if the soul had flitted from him while he still lived. He had now got out of hand entirely, and Ma Mie dared not approach him, but she hung around trying to anticipate his wants and watching his progress with a sickening heart. Finally the time came when she went mad also, for one night Hawkshawe put a fearful insult on her. She drew her dagger to kill him, but he had strength to wrench it from her grasp and flung her to the corner of the room, where she lay stunned and bleeding. After a time she picked herself up and stepped out of the room without a look at the wretched Hawkshawe and his still more vile companion.