Nothing to be done with _them!_ Indeed, there was little now “to be done” anywhere. The whole machinery of life was changed. Formerly, when fellows started in life, they were trustful, uncalculating, and careless. Now, on the contrary, they were wary, cautious, and suspectful. Instead of attaching themselves to older men as safe guides and counsellors, they hung back from them as too skilful and too crafty to be dealt with. Except Trafford he had not seen one--not one, for many a day--who could be “chaffed” into a bet, or laughed into play against his inclination. And what had he made of Trafford? A few hundred pounds in hand, and those letters which now Fossbrooke had insisted on his giving up. How invariably it was that same man who came up at every crisis of his life to thwart and defeat him. And it was a hard, a cruelly hard, thing to remember that this very man who had been the dupe of hundreds, who had been rogued and swindled out of all he had, should still have brought all his faculties to the task of persecuting _him!_ “One might have thought,” said he, with a bitter laugh, “that he had troubles enough of his own not to have spare time to bestow upon me and my affairs. He was once, I own indeed, a rich man, with station and influence, and now he is a beggar. There was a time no society refused him _entrée_; now it is thought a very gracious thing to know him. Why will these things occupy him? And this stupid rebellion! I wonder how far he is compromised, or how far one could manage to have him compromised, by it? It is doubtless some personal consideration, some liking for this or that man, that has entangled him in it. If Pemberton were not so close, he could tell this; but these lawyers are so reserved, so crafty, they will not even tell what a few hours later the whole world will read in the public papers. “If I were to have my choice, it would puzzle me sorely to determine whether I'd rather be left a fine estate,--four or five thousand a year,--or be able to send old Fossbrooke to a penal settlement. I am afraid, sorely afraid, my disinterestedness would gain the day, and that I 'd sacrifice my enjoyment to my vengeance! He has done me such a long list of wrongs, I 'd like to square the account. It would be a moment worth living for,--that instant when the word Guilty would drop from the jury-box, and that I could lean over the dock and exchange a look with him. I 'm not so sure he 'd quail, though; but the shame,--the shame might unman him!” He had reached the gate of the avenue as he thus mused, and was about to insert the key in the lock, when a man arose from a little bench beside the lodge, and said,--“A fine night, sir; I 'm glad you 're come.” “Who are you? Stand off!” cried Se well, drawing his revolver, as he spoke, from his breast-pocket. “O'Reardon, your honor,--only O'Reardon,” said the fellow, in his well-known whine.