fifteen! He started up trembling, with beads standing on his forehead and with despairing eyes. "I couldn't stand it!" he moaned. "I'll never go through it. They shan't take me alive." Feverishly he felt for his pocket, in his agitation missing the opening more than once. He took out the phial, gave an apprehensive glance round at the window, emptied the contents into the glass and filled it up with champagne. Then, with the means of escape ready to his hand, he seemed to steady himself. "Now," he said, with a grim smile; "five seconds' courage, and I can snap my fingers at 'em all. It's only like a sleeping draught." He raised the glass to his lips, held it there for two or three seconds, and then set it down. Perhaps there was no hurry for five minutes. "Now, I'm going off," he soliloquized dreamily. "I wish I'd had a fairer fling while I was at it. It has been a poor, middle-class rollick after all," he continued ruefully. "It's too late now. But I should like to have done the real swell, if only for a week; gone in for thousands instead of a few paltry pounds; Belgravia instead of Camden Town; Monte Carlo instead of Herne Bay and Yarmouth; high-steppers; Hurlingham; Henley; a real lady or two mashed on me instead of--ah, well, she wasn't so bad; it wasn't her fault she wasn't class: she'll be the only one to be sorry. Champagne," he took up the glass, "I might have had this sort all along if I'd had the nerve." Suddenly recollecting, he set down the glass hastily. "I forgot." Curiously he seemed to shudder at his narrow escape. Then, as though impatient with his temporizing, "Bah! let me get it over," he muttered, and lifted the glass again, only to set it down once more. "I wonder," he said, as making an excuse for delay, "what the bill for this little dinner comes to. Poor Fatty will have to apply to my executors. Wonder if he will see a joke there." He laughed at his touch of Cockneyfied humour. Then relapsed into the morbid state. "Will the pretty little daughter be sorry? Perhaps. Not she; no one will. The sooner I'm off the hooks the better. Here goes for the last time." He took up the glass. "I'll count three, and then toss it off." He shut his eyes, hesitated a moment, then began. "One, two, thr----" The glass was but waiting for the last word to leave his lips when the door opened with an impatient, unceremonious burst, and a man came in, flinging it to behind him. Another dusty, worn-out man, who stared for a moment at Peckover, and then, turning a chair from the table, just let himself fall into it. CHAPTER VII Peckover, arrested in his intent, had opened his eyes, and now stood staring half dazed at the new-comer. "Hullo!" yawned that person genially. "Eh?" ejaculated Peckover hazily, eyeing him with suspicion, and not quite able to realize the situation. "Excuse me if I disturb you," said the man, with another tremendous yawn. "If I don't sit down somewhere I shall drop on the floor."