There was no affectation about Laurence Stanninghame's indifference. It was perfectly genuine. Strong-nerved constitutionally, callous, hard-hearted through stress of circumstances, such sights as that just witnessed told not one atom upon him. In the sufferings of the miserable wretches he saw only a lurid alternative--his own. In them, toiling along, wearily, dejectedly, beneath the chain or yoke, he saw himself, toiling, grinding, at some sordid and utterly repellent form of labour, for a miserable pittance; no ray of light, no redeeming rest or enjoyment to sweeten life until that life should end. In them, cowering, writhing, beneath the driver's brutal lash, he saw himself, ever lashed and stung by the torturing consciousness of what might have been, by the recollection of what had been. Or did they fall exhausted, fainting, to die, or to undergo decapitation to insure that such exhaustion should not open even a feeble possibility of escape, there too, he saw himself sinking, borne down by the sheer blank hopelessness of fate, taking refuge in the Dark Unknown, his end the grave of the suicide. It was himself or them, and he preferred that it should be them. Preyer or preyed upon--such was the iron immutable law of life, from man in his highest development to the minutest of insects; and with this law he was but complying, not in wanton cruelty, but in cold, passive ruthlessness. Further, the sufferings of these people were only transitory. They would be much better off when the journey was ended and they were disposed of--better off indeed than many a free person in civilized and Christian lands. Besides, such races as these, low down as they were in the scale of humanity, suffered but little. It needs imagination, refinement, to accentuate suffering. To anything approaching such attributes, these were utter strangers. They were mere animals. Men dealt in sheep and cattle, in order to live, in horses and other beasts of burden, why not in these, who were even lower than the higher animals? This theory of their sinister occupation Hazon thoroughly indorsed. "Depend upon it, Stanninghame," he said, "ours is the right view to take of it--the only view. This is 'a world of plunder and prey,' as Tennyson puts it, and we have got to prey or be preyed upon. You, for instance, seem to have fulfilled the latter role, hitherto, and it seems only right you should have your turn now. To cite the latest instance, all this rotten scrip and market-rigging finished you off, and what was that but rascality?" "Of course, I've been plundered, swindled, all along the line, ever since I can remember. I'm tired of that d----d respectability, Hazon. It doesn't pay. It never has paid. This, however, does." The other smiled significantly at the word.