It must not be supposed that Laurence gave this information in the precise words of the diary, for this proved to be a hastily compiled composition, thrown together at odd moments--Heaven knows what for, unless for the sheer egotistical gratification of its author. He shifted all extraneous matter, translated the notes of the earlier to the later years, and in one way and another drew together the story of the Carsons and the events at Kikat into a concise narrative. This he wrote out carefully, and one evening, when Tui and Aldean were love-making over the billiard-table, he read it out to an audience of three. So it is that the following narrative must be regarded strictly as Mallow's version--compiled by him from the materials supplied by the twenty-one volumes of the diary, and told by him, in the first person, from its author's point of view. CHAPTER VIII. "A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS." "Bad luck, bad luck, bad luck--there's my life's history in one word. The day I launched myself on the world misfortune established herself at my elbow, and my most persistent endeavours have failed to oust her from that position. Only so far as to allow me perfect health from first to last has she relented. Yet even that has had its disadvantages. It has whetted an appetite, already omnivorous, for the luxuries of life--luxuries for the acquirement of which the means have ever been withheld. How I have pursued them--how they have eluded me! It is this quest for luxury, this craving to satisfy an appetite abnormal and insatiable, that has brought upon me so much of trouble. I have had the worst of luck. Ten thousand a year might have made an honest man of me. But I defy St. Paul himself to have stood in my place with my mind, my body, my soul, and not have done the things that I have done. He would have been another Michael Trall. I do not say I could ever have been like St. Paul. That is another matter. My passion has been the cakes and ale of life--I have never had enough of them; I could not have enough of them. But I was not gifted even with the means for their procuration in a moderate degree. So I don't blame myself. I cannot blame myself. No one can justly blame me. It is nature that is responsible for what I am--for what I have done. Blame her, or whosoever, or whatsoever inspires her to bestow upon a luckless man passions strong and undeniable--passions overwhelming and senses insatiable, while denying him the wherewithal to gratify them. That is the most refined torture. I can conceive nothing more ubiquitous, nothing more merciless. "Well, that is what has ruined me.