But Billiter had turned his broad back on him and did not catch the words, whereby possibly he escaped a broken head. Billiter was sometimes sensitive on the point of honour. He had sunk to lower depths of meanness and petty villainy than the other two in whom the moral sense still lingered. He would acknowledge himself to be a “wrong ‘un” because that vague term connoted in his mind merely a gentleman of broken fortune who was put to shifts (such as his disastrous bargain with Old Joe Jenks and the present conspiracy) for his living; but a crook was a common thief or swindler, a member of the criminal classes, of a confraternity to which he, Billiter, deemed it impossible that he could belong, especially during a period like the present, when he found himself, after many years of dingy linen, apparelled in the gorgeous raiment of his gentlemanly days. He had sunk below the line of self-realisation. But the others had not. Vandermeer, who hitherto had merely snapped like a jackal at passing food to satisfy his hunger, did not deceive himself as to what he had become. Cynical, he felt no remorse. On the other hand, Huckaby, who went to bed that night sober, had a bad attack of conscience during the small hours and woke up next morning with a headache. Whereupon he upbraided himself for his folly; first, in confiding to his companions the project of his whimsical adventure; secondly, in allowing it to drift into such a despicable entanglement; thirdly, in associating himself with a scarlet crustacean of Billiter’s claw-power; and fourthly, in not getting drunk. Huckaby was nearer Quixtus than the others in education and point of view. Though willing to accept any alms thrown to him he was not rapacious; he had not regarded his mad and wealthy patron entirely as a pigeon to be plucked; and beneath all the corruption of his nature there burnt a spark of affection for the kindly man who had befriended him and whose trust he had betrayed. He spent most of the ineffectual day in shaping a resolution to withdraw from the discreditable compact. But by the last post in the evening he received a laconic postcard from Billiter: “_The Fountain plays_.” The sapped will-power gave way before the march of practical events. With a shrug he accepted the message as a decree of destiny, and wandered forth into congenial haunts, where, in one respect at least, he did not repeat the folly of the previous evening. CHAPTER XIII