But Swayne "did not rightly know." He had the addresses in cipher somewhere, but he could not put his hand upon them. Half wild with fear, Colonel Tempest searched the pockets of the clothes that lay about the room, holding up their contents for Swayne to look at. It was like some hideous game of hide-and-seek. But the latter only shook his head. "I have 'em somewhere," he repeated, "and there was a change not so long ago. When was it? May. There's one of 'em written down in cipher in my pocket-book in May, I know that." "Here. This one?" said Colonel Tempest, holding out a greasy pocket-book. "That's it," said Swayne. "Some time in May." Colonel Tempest turned to the month, and actually found a page with a faint pencil scrawl in cipher across it. "That's him," said Swayne. "James Larkin," and he read out a complicated address without difficulty. "Will that find him?" asked Colonel Tempest, his hand shaking so much that he could hardly write down Swayne's words. "If it's to his advantage it will." "For certain?" "Certain." "And the others?" "There's one dead," said Swayne, his voice waxing feebler and feebler as the momentary galvanism of Colonel Tempest's terror lost its effect. "And there's two I had back the papers from; they were sick of it, and they said he had a charmed life. And one of 'em went to America, and married, and set up respectable. I have his paper too. And one of 'em's in quod, but he'll be out soon, I reckon, and he's good for another try. He precious near brought it off last time. There's a few left that's still biding their time! There! And now I won't hear nothin' more about it. Get to the prayers, Colonel, and be quick. Parson might have come again, damn him." "Stop a minute. Can I get at the others through Larkin?" Swayne had sunk back spent and livid. He looked at Colonel Tempest with fixed and glassy eyes. "Yes," he said, with the ghost of an oath; "get to the prayers." Colonel Tempest was still trembling with the relief from that horrible nightmare of suspense as he opened the shiny new Prayer-book which the clergyman had left. He held the first link. He had now only to draw the whole chain through his hand, and break it to atoms; the chain that was dragging him down to hell. He hastily began to read. God has heard many prayers, but, perhaps, not many like those which ascended from that hideous tumbled death-bed, where kneeling self-interest halted through the supplication, and prostrate self-interest gasped out Amen. Oh! did He who first taught us how to pray, did He, raised high upon the cross of an apparent failure, look down the ages that were yet to come, and see how we should abuse that gift of prayer? Was that bitter cry which has echoed through eighteen hundred years wrung from Him even for our sakes also as well as those who stood around Him--"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"?