By which it will appear that despairing impulse was already straining at the bit. None the less, when six o’clock came he went home, ate his supper, read till midnight, and then went to bed, though not to sleep. On the morrow, which was the Sunday, he set on foot a little emprise the planning of which had eased him through the wakeful hours of the night. It was this: Dorothy had a class in a mission school, and this he knew, and the place, but not the hour. For the latter ignorance he was thankful, since it gave him an excuse for haunting the neighbourhood of the mission chapel during the better part of the day. Late in the afternoon he was rewarded by catching a glimpse of her as she went in, and, heartened by this, he did sentry duty on the opposite side of the street until the school was dismissed. She came out among the last with a group of children around her, and Brant’s heart went warm at the sight. “God bless her!” he said under his breath; and then he crossed the street to put his fate to the touch. If she knew--if her mother had told her--her greeting would show it forth, and he would know then that the worst had befallen. They met at the corner, and Dorothy looked up as she was bidding her children good-bye. He made sure she saw him, though there was no sign of recognition in her eyes. Then she bent over one of the little ones as if to avoid him, and he went on quickly with rage and shame in his heart, and the devil’s sickle gathering in the harvest which had been ripening through the days of bitterness. That night he went to his room as usual after supper, but not to stay. At eight o’clock he flung down the book he had been trying to read, slipped the weapon which had once been James Harding’s into the pocket of his overcoat, and left the house. Half an hour later he was standing at the bar in the Draconian kennel, and Tom Deverney was welcoming him with gruff heartiness. “Well, say! I thought you’d got lost in the shuffle, sure. Where have you been--over the range again?” “No, I haven’t been out of town.” “You took blame’ good care not to show up here, then,” retorted Deverney. “First you know you’ll have to be packing a card case; that’s about what you’ll have to do.” “I have been busy,” said Brant. Then the smell of the liquor got into his nostrils and he cut himself adrift with a word. “Shall we have a drink together, and call it square, Tom?” Deverney spun a glass across the polished mahogany and reached for a conical bottle in the cooler. “I don’t know as I ought to drink with you--you wouldn’t drink with me the last time you showed up. What shall it be--a little of the same?” “Always,” said Brant. “I don’t mix.” He helped himself sparingly and touched glasses with the bartender. “Here’s how.” “Looking at you.” Brant paid, and the bartender dipped the glasses. “Going to try your luck a while this evening?” he asked.