Whatever might come or go he could do nothing. He was powerless to climb that rope. The excitement which had sustained him at fever pitch for many days was now gone finally. He could no longer hope, not only to save his friends from financial ruin and realise a handsome fortune, but he could no longer hope to do more than drag on the most miserable of existences hour by hour, under conditions the meanest pauper would refuse to accept. Here was he doomed to death, as surely as the condemned man in the condemned cell is doomed to death. In a certain number of days, in a certain number of hours, he must die, as inevitably as the sun must rise and set upon the broad, fair world above him. He had hoped greatly, and laboured greatly, and lost all--all--all. He put his hand in his pocket and felt his knife. Would it not be best to die while he had the companionship of the light, the companionship of the spectacle of the dead? To all intents and purposes he was as dead as though he had been blown from the muzzle of a gun. Morally, there could be no harm in his anticipating by a few hours, a few days of dreary pain, the fate which was inevitably before him. Morally, he did not shrink from the knife. But in him was strong the brute instinct, the love of life for life's sake, for the infinite potentialities of hope that lie hidden in the last ragged remnant of existence. It would, perhaps, be better after all to wait until the lantern burnt out, and he was alone with silence and the dead. Then he should possibly go mad, and it was incredible that the insane could suffer so acutely as he was suffering now. Supposing, then, some fine delirium seized him, and he fancied himself to be Pluto, and that this realm of darkness was his natural element, his habitual haunt; that hunger and thirst were the inevitable accessories of his gloomy rule, and that the dignity of his position was heightened by the fare which Charon had just ferried across the Styx, and now lay there before him! Here the lantern went out. Fool! Fool! Madman! What had he been thinking about? Two things, only two, had been left to him--life and light. Now the latter had been taken away from him for ever. For ever! What an awful phrase! Here was he, who had no more than touched manhood, thrust downward by a malignant chance into a vile dark dungeon to die. Here was he, who ought to be in the full plenitude of his youthful strength, unable to master the brief space hanging there in the darkness above him, between the invisible floor and the imperceptible roof.