immediately, with the recuperative powers of youth and his great strength, he was detained there several days longer than was necessary by his host’s insistence, until indeed the physician in charge laughed in the face of Mr. Gerault Bonley, the broker. “Take care you don’t do anything eccentric,” the doctor said in parting at last from his patient. “That company might shut you up in a lunatic asylum or a sanitarium, where you would be ready for inspection at all hours,--just to make sure you are alive, you see.” It was meant for a joke, but it grated on the nerves of the _cestui que vie_. And now it came back as he lay under the dark roof of Tubal Cain Sims’s house, staring into the unresponsive night, with the thought that a good strong state prison would serve the purpose of the Marble Company, looking toward his safekeeping, more effectually still. He could well understand their despair upon the supposed determination of the life estate, for since they had secured the land at slight cost, the vast profits of the industry were to the ordinary business mind all the dearer, being the favor, as it were, of chance, or the uncovenanted mercy of Providence,--“clean make.” How could they survive the reversion of the property, with all its present wealth and its future prospects, to the original grantor? His imagination, alert as it was, failed to respond to so heavy a demand upon its resources. Should they find that the death of the _cestui que vie_ was spurious, their tenancy not yet expired, should they be restored to their former status, what a warning this untoward alarm would seem, what restraints upon his liberty might not be attempted! The idea bereft him of his last hope. Could he reasonably expect to escape prosecution when his custody in the clutches of the law was so obviously to the interests of a powerful corporation like this? Even if his own firm of Greenhalge, Gould & Fife should be averse to it to avenge their losses, what powerful influence would be brought to bear upon them by the Gerault Bonley Marble Company; what substantial values were to be dangled before the eyes of a broken firm in the friendship and backing of a strong financial association like this! The Marble Company would move heaven and earth to place him behind the bars. There could Mr. Bonley come and look at him any fine day, as he sat making shoes and saddles,--he had heard that at the penitentiary they put their swell guests to such occupations, and his deft fingers might commend their utility in this service to the commonwealth,--or perhaps busied in some clerical capacity to which his long experience in counting-rooms rendered him apt. Mr. Bonley’s scarlet countenance and bristly white mustache were of a calmer aspect as they appeared in this vision than they had worn in reality for many a long day! The menu would contain naught to destroy the digestion of the _cestui que vie_ or affright the