‘I suppose this’ll have to go back too,’ he muttered, and replaced the gold, with a sigh of disgust. The stricken man’s eyes gleamed, and he put out his left hand feebly. Eugene put the bag into it, but the grasp was uncertain, and it fell again to the ground. The shock of seemingly losing it a second time was too much for the disordered intellect, and in a dead swoon, Stephen Rattray fell stiffly forward on to his nephew’s shoulder. Eugene laid him on the ground, carefully buttoned the packet into the inner pocket of his Uncle’s coat, and then drew himself away to think. He couldn’t get a clear grasp of things with that hated figure touching his. Leaning apart against a tree, and looking down at the helpless form, he dealt grimly and despitefully in his heart with the feeling that troubled him; let it stand for want of better phrasing at ‘common humanity.’ He railed at it; he even took some steps of retreat; he reasoned with himself. This man, when a nod of the head might have saved, had reduced him to the level of the brute beasts--what duty then lay upon him to act but upon that level? This man lay there, dependent on him for a chance perhaps of further life. Yes, but there had been a bitter hour, when their positions had been reversed, and the closing of that hour, with its depths of horror and degradation, its blotting out of all hope and life, was vividly before him. This, too, was an old man, at the end of things, and he had been a young man at the beginning--that was but an aggravation. As things now were he had done him no wrong, taken no revenge; the packet was found; it was even himself that had restored it: the stroke had come through a visitation of the fates, through no dealing of his. He searched, and he failed to see any reason why he should lift a finger to give back life to this hulk. It was adding insult to injury indeed to expect him to carry his enemy perhaps a mile in search of help. Leave him here?--and get help?--he would certainly die before it came. No, either all or nothing; and it should be, by heaven, _nothing_! He turned on his heel,--and straightway it came upon him that these things were not done. Just as impossible as kicking a fellow on the ground, or shooting an unarmed man. ‘By Gad! the other thing’s got to be done! When I’ve lived a few years in Borneo or some such place, I shall know better how to deal with you, my friend; in the meantime--’ he lifted him, and with wearily slow steps bore him disgustedly in the direction of the Alexandria Gate. Now that he had begun, he meant to see it through; and with many a halt, for his Uncle was a heavy man, he got him through the fast closing fog to the crossing of Rotten Row.