No, he lived on because before he died he had a hate to satisfy, a revenge to work. He would kill this dog, Ramiro, who had tricked him with his crystal gazing and his talk of friendship, who had frightened him with the threat of death until he became like some poor girl and for fear signed away his honour—oh, Heaven! for very fear, he who prided himself upon his noble Spanish blood, the blood of warriors—this treacherous dog, who, having used him, had not hesitated to betray his shame to her from whom most of all it should have been hidden, and, for aught he knew, to the others also. Yes if ever he met him—his own brother—Foy would spit upon him in the street; Foy, who was so hatefully open and honest, who could not understand into what degradation a man’s nerves may drag him. And Martin, who had always mistrusted and despised him, why, if he found the chance, he would tear him limb from limb as a kite tears a partridge. And, worse still, Dirk van Goorl, the man who had befriended him, who had bred him up although he was no son of his, but the child of some rival, he would sit there in his prison cell, and while his face fell in and his bones grew daily plainer, till at length his portly presence was as that of a living skeleton, he would sit there by the window, watching the dishes of savoury food pass in and out beneath him, and between the pangs of his long-drawn, hideous agony, put up his prayer to God to pay back to him, Adrian, all the woe that he had caused. Oh! it was too much. Under the crushing weight of his suffering, his senses left him, and he found such peace as to-day is won by those who are about to pass beneath the surgeon’s knife; the peace that but too often wakes to a livelier agony. When Adrian came to himself again, he felt cold, for already the autumn evening had begun to fall, and there was a feel in the clear, still air as of approaching frost. Also he was hungry (Dirk van Goorl, too, must be growing hungry now, he remembered), for he had eaten nothing since the yesterday. He would go into the town, get food, and then make up his mind what he should do.