After a time Shaughnessy withdrew his gaze, and, with a convulsive movement, snapped the watch shut. Slowly, fearfully, he approached the prostrate young fellow on the floor, afraid of what he should see. Now he bent on one knee over the senseless O'Byrn, peering strangely into his face. He thrust the watch into the little Irishman's pocket, as if anxious to hide it from his own vision. Then, timidly, he raised the inert right arm of his victim and slipped the sleeve up from the wrist. There was the scar. A deep groan burst from Shaughnessy's lips; in his eyes gloomed, with added intensity, the horror that was the heritage of the past. CHAPTER XXI THE LASH In the breadth and the depth of evil in the man whom the world had long known as John Shaughnessy there was one wicked act whose memory was torment. Unprincipled, ruthless, cruel as he was, this thing, perhaps in inevitable reprisal for outraged higher laws, had long haunted him; disturbing his sleep, embittering his waking hours. For it was only just that a man base enough to leave, in far worse case than the widow and the orphan, those he was morally and legally bound to protect, should be disturbed by ghosts. It was remorse, it had long been remorse, from which this calloused devil was suffering. His evil, white face was a mask to hide much that the masquerader would have given all at times to have forgotten. For a long time Shaughnessy bent over the silent figure on the floor; crouching, motionless as if cut in stone. His eyes, unnaturally brilliant, repellent in their fixed glare, rested long on the reporter's unconscious face. That face--how freckled, how grotesquely homely! Why, he had been a handsome baby! Still, the same mop of red, curly hair; and, after all, did he but open his eyes Shaughnessy thought there would be a definite resemblance to another. Shaughnessy recollected having been vaguely troubled once or twice before by this half-sensed similitude of the young fellow to someone he had known. He knew now. Why, the boy looked like his mother, of course; though there was only a pathetic hint of it, for his mother had been very pretty. This Shaughnessy could vouch for. Poor unfortunate, had she not been his wife?