necessity of absconding, or felt that his Fate had arrived. Was his luck going? Was his game nearly played out? There had been a great change lately, without a doubt; he must not shut his eyes to that. Etchingham was certainly changed. Very civil and acquiescent in all that was suggested to him, never referring to their dispute on that unlucky night, but still without a particle of the heartiness which formerly characterised him, and which was the salt of his otherwise unpleasant disposition. There had been a turn of luck, too, in turf-matters. Some of his own private speculations (for Gilbert had a book of his own in addition to the "operations" in which he had a joint interest with Lord Ticehurst, and was said also to do a great deal by anonymous commission) had been very unfortunate during the past season, and so far as he could see he was not likely to recoup himself by any success at Doncaster, where one of Lord Ticehurst's cracks had been disgracefully beaten for the Cup, while another, which had been one of the leading favourites for the Leger, had run down the scale in the most alarming manner, and was now, on the eve of the race, scarcely mentioned in the betting. Was his luck going? was his game nearly played out? _Venit summa dies et ineluctabile fatum!_ Where had he heard that, Gilbert Lloyd wondered as he sat on the edge of his bed at the Angel Inn at Doncaster, turning all these things in his mind. _Ineluctabile fatum_. He gave a half-shudder as he repeated the words, and he gulped down half the tumbler of brandy standing on the table by his side. He felt a _frisson_ run through him--that kind of creeping feeling which silly old women ascribe to the fact of someone "walking over your grave"--on which the brandy had no effect, and he stamped his foot in rage at his weakness. He was all wrong somehow; out of health, perhaps? But his clear sense refused to be deluded by that excuse. _Ineluctabile fatum!_ that was it, the _summa dies_ for him was at hand; he felt it, he knew it, and found it in vain to struggle, impossible to make head against it. The roar of the crowd in the street came through the open window of the room in which he sat, that hideous roar which fills the streets of every country town at race-time, and which he knew so well, with its component parts of ribaldry, blasphemy, bestiality, and idiotcy. The day was bright and hot and clear--what did the noise outside and the bright day remind him of? Something unpleasant, he felt, but he could not exactly fix it in his memory. He rose, and his eyes fell on the big, heavy, old-fashioned four-post bedstead on which he had been seated, and on the table with the glass and bottles standing by it. And then in an instant what had been dimly haunting his memory flashed all bright across his brain: Brighton, the crowd of racing-men on the cliff in the hot, bright weather, and the lodging, with Harvey Gore dying on the bed! Gilbert Lloyd swallowed the