“He mought be a sinner, an’ the paper don’t like ter say it, him bein’ dead,” wheezed Mrs. Sims lugubriously, intuitively seizing upon a salient point of polite modern journalism. The anxious speculation in her fat overclouded countenance was painful to see, for Mrs. Sims believed in a material hell with a plenitude of brimstone and blue blazes. “I dare say he _was_ a sinner!” exclaimed the juggler, with his manner of half-mocking banter. “Poor Lucien Royce!” Only late that night, when all the house was still, and darkness was among the sombre mountains, and the absolute negation of vision seemed to nullify all the world, did his mood change. He lay staring with unseeing eyes into the void gloom about him, yet beholding with a faculty more potent than sight the decorated chancel, the clergyman in his surplice, the crowds of sympathetic faces, the casket with the funeral wreaths covering it,--the hideous mockery that it all was, the terrible hoax! V. The juggler was hardly disposed to felicitate himself upon this feat of simulation which had served to deceive the whole of his native city, and to bury a stranger, as it were, in his own grave. He began to pity the plight of the dead if they could so yearningly remember the life they had left. Return for him was impossible. Glimpses of the moon might shadow forth spirits revenant, but for him memory only must serve. He wondered that he could not accept conclusions so evidently final, for over and again, in the deep watches of the night, he would argue anew within himself the chances _pro_ and _con_ of transforming these immutable fictions into fact, of overcoming the appearance of crime by his previous high character, of relying on the good feeling of the firm, and the futility of the proceeding, to save him from prosecution. Then always, when he would reach this point, and his heart would begin to beat fast with the hope of restoration to life, it would stand still with a sudden paralysis and sink like lead; for there were interests other than those of revenge or justice, or preserving the public morals by enforcing penalties for the infringement of the law to be served by his incarceration in a good strong safe prison. There existed a certain corporation, the Gerault Bonley Marble Company, that he knew would give much money to be able to lay hands upon him now, and that had doubtless grieved for his demise like unto Rachel mourning for her children. The Gerault Bonley Marble Company had, in the past few years, been greatly enriched by the discovery of beds of a very fine marble in a large body of Tennessee land, in which, however, they merely held an estate _per autre vie_,--limited to the duration of Lucien Royce’s natural existence. In this unique position of a _cestui que vie_ he had at first felt a certain glow of pride. It was characteristic of his knack of achieving importance and prominence with so slight effort that he seemed, as it were, born to a certain preëminence.