‘Do you think I’ll let the fellow go like that?’ cried Tom, making a step after him, but perhaps his fury fell at the sight of the might and strength of the retiring champion--perhaps it was only the wretchedness in his mind that fell from the burning to the freezing point. He sat down gloomily, after having watched him disappear, on the bench from which Charlie Blackmore had risen. ‘I don’t care what becomes of me, Jan,’ he said. ‘I’m done. Nothing that ever happens will be any good to me now. I’ve choked that fellow off, that’s one thing, and he’ll never dare speak to you again. But as for me, I’m done, and I’ll never lift my head any more.’ ‘Oh Tom!’ Janet cried. She was too much excited by her own affairs to turn in a moment with this new evolution to his--but that panting cry bore any meaning according to the hearer’s apprehension, and he was too deep in his own thoughts to need more. ‘Yes,’ said Tom, ‘it’s all over with me. Just come of age and lots of money to spend, and all the world before me, as you might say--but I’ll never have the heart to make any stand again. To think that all I’ve got, and might have done so much with, is to go to a woman that never had sixpence in her life and knows no more than a dog how to behave herself! As for hurting her, it wouldn’t have hurt her, not a bit--and if she’d had the chance she would have done just as bad by me. Law,’ cried Tom, with bitter contempt, ‘what’s the good of law when it can’t protect a fellow before he comes to his full senses! To think I should have tied such a burden on my back, and done for myself for ever before I came of age. It’s horrible,’ he cried with the earnestness of conviction; ‘it’s damnable--that’s what it is.’ ‘Oh Tom, perhaps it will not be so bad,’ said Janet, putting her hand within his to show her sympathy. She was very uncertain as to what it was that caused this despair, and she had been vaguely impressed with the fact that this time what Tom had done was something terrible; but neither her own trouble nor any doubt about his conduct (which was so seldom blameless) could quench the sympathy with which she responded to his appeal. ‘Oh, yes, it will be quite as bad and worse--and I’m a ruined man,’ cried Tom. ‘Done for! although it was only last week,’ he said with a piteous quiver of the lip which a half-grown moustache nearly shaded, ‘that I came of age.’