Like a lurid dream it all started up again in his brain. There the man stood--he tingled from head to foot as he beheld him--with face pinched and worn, but with that same broad, unstained brow, the same scornful grey eyes, the same muscular fingers--he seemed to feel them at his collar again--and he could not grind him to powder, as he would like to do, nor put him to any kind of horrible torture, such as he would have deemed desirable for him. Myles’s eyes fell upon him, and a sudden gleam of scornful contemptuous amusement shot into them; his head flung itself backwards--his lips curved into a kind of smile, but otherwise he did not deign to notice Mr. Spenceley. Into the heart of the latter the old devils of revengeful desire and frantic hatred came leaping back. Why had he been so quiet? Why had he suffered himself to be laughed at and diverted from his original purpose of punishment? Why had he sat down patiently all this time with that--a black cloud of fury overshadowed his mind. His thoughts were scarcely coherent. But it was incredible. The fellow should and must be made to pay dearly for his insolence. He had sworn it once, and he would carry it out now. With wrath and rage contending madly in his stupid, brutal soul, he went on into the committee-room, where he was immediately followed by Sebastian Mallory, and business commenced. Fred Spenceley was too much occupied with his own private fury, with thinking, with a sort of hatred and love combined, of the sweet, contemptuous face of Adrienne Blisset, which he could not banish from his mind--of these and of other things, to take any particular notice of the man called James Hoyle, who was summoned to read a report to the Board that afternoon. He had been intrusted with the task of visiting certain courts in a low part of the town, whither, it was said, a number of the factory hands had been obliged to retire, in consequence of being unable any longer to pay the rent of more respectable houses. Mr. Hoyle had offered himself to the Board as peculiarly suited for the work, being himself a minister of the gospel, and used to strange scenes and low neighbourhoods. ‘He speaks the truth there, at all events,’ Sebastian Mallory had remarked _sotto voce_ to Canon Ponsonby, ‘but the Father of Lies has had some share in his parentage, all the same, sir--don’t you think so?’ ‘Or else he has selected him as his peculiar adversary, and left the traces of his attempts to corrupt him,’ replied Canon Ponsonby, fixing his piercing eyes upon Mr. Hoyle. But as Mr. Hoyle really did seem well fitted and anxious for the work, he was allowed to undertake it. His report was considered clear and succinct. He was told that he had done well; a further commission of the same kind was given him, and he was told to present himself again as soon as possible with the required information.