They had reached Fifth Avenue, and for a moment both loitered on the curb. Thorold seemed to have something to add, but he must have had difficulty in expressing it, for he nodded as though to reiterate the promise. "I can rely upon you then, can I?" Roland asked. "Keep out of my way, sir, and I will try, as I have tried, to forget." A 'bus was passing, he hailed it, and disappeared. Roland watched the conveyance, and shook the snow-flakes from his coat. "Try, and be damned," he muttered. "I haven't done with you yet." The disdain of a revenge at hand is accounted the uniquest possible vengeance. And it is quite possible that had Roland's monetary affairs been in a better condition, on a sound and solid basis, let us say, he would willingly have put that paradox into action. But on leaving Tuxedo he happened to be extremely hungry--hungry, first and foremost, for the possession of that wealth which in this admirably conducted country of ours lifts a man above the law, and, an adroit combination of scoundrelism and incompetence aiding, sometimes lands him high among the executives of state. By political ambition, however, it is only just to say he was uninspired. In certain assemblies he had taken the trouble to assert that our government is one at which Abyssinia might sneer, but the role of reformer was not one which he had any inclination to attempt. Several of his progenitors figured, and prominently too, in abridgments of history; and, if posterity were not satisfied with that, he had a very clear idea as to what posterity might do. In so far as he was personally concerned, the prominence alluded to was a thing which he accepted as a matter of course: it was an integral part of himself; he would have missed it as he would have missed a leg or the point of his nose; but otherwise it left his pulse unstirred. No, his hunger was not for preferment or place. It was for the ten million which the Hon. Paul Dunellen had gathered together, and which the laws of gravitation would prevent him from carrying away when he died. That was the nature of Roland Mistrial's hunger, and as incidental thereto was the thirst to adjust an outstanding account.