he required no indoor lodging, and no food but what the pavement could supply. As soon as the search narrowed and the police turned their attention to the ground at their feet, he could easily walk out some afternoon and tramp his way to where a thousand pounds were still waiting for him in a house where he might hide comfortably till the whole affair was blown over.

He gave himself plenty of time to mature his plans, and found them not unpromising. His rôle of respectability, limited as it was, had been a hard strain upon him, and it was with a feeling of intense relief that he breathed once more the free air of outlawry. Except for gold's sake, the old hand-to-mouth life had been the best after all. He had not even lost the golden goose whom he had chosen to call Zelda: he flattered himself that he could still collect eggs enough to feed both his pocket and his revenge. He had not failed to recognise her ambition to become a great lady and to free herself from his clutches, so that his silence would be something worth buying. He argued in this way, if it is lawful to reduce the instincts of genius to logical forms. "If Margaret will still go on bleeding, I can get Zelda to pay me at least half her earnings to say nothing. If Margaret holds me to my bargain after giving me the thousand pounds, I shall have the thousand, and Zelda will still pay. If Zelda won't pay, she'll buy my secret, and I shall get the reward besides. Faith, I shall live like a lord-'tis but chousing the Gorgios, after all. It's them the stuff comes from, and what's Mag's is mine, and as I meant to go halves with Zelda, Zelda ought to go halves with me. Considering what her keep and training have cost me, that's but fair."

In short, while to go under water without leaving a circle upon the surface is generally considered an impossible feat of dexterity in a civilised country, for Aaron, who belonged to a republic within a republic, nothing was more simple. His chance meeting with Carol, though it was a good test of the sufficiency of his general disguise, he accepted as the signal for its being time to make his plunge for a thousand pounds, and to come up on the other side so soon as the hunt should pass by. He had considerable fear of a visible policeman, but he had none of that hunted sensation which is supposed to be a criminal's worst punishment. As long as all things went well without, all was well with him within. His first precaution alone was enough to ensure his safety. He walked across country until, by following a track whereof half was evolved from wide local knowledge and half from a sort of cat-like sagacity, he found congenial quarters and comrades under a rugged tent in a Surrey lane.

It is men like Aaron Goldrick who are masters of the human situation. You might toss him down where you please, but you could no more overturn him than a round ball. It was not so much that he fell upon his legs like a cat as that he could stand as well upon one part of himself as upon another. Strip him stark naked and cast him upon a desert island, and he would manage to play heads and tails for cowries with the sea-gulls, if land-gulls were not to be found. Put a noose round

his neck, and he would cheat the hangman. He was only out of his element when fettered with the aids that most men need to climb. If his incessant rolling gathered no lasting moss, it was not without result: it was his nature to be round and smooth and slippery, and to revel in rubbing the moss off other stones as he rolled rather than to gather any of his own. His delight was in trying to grow rich rather than in being rich, so that to be for ever at the bottom of the ladder was no disappointment to him-it was merely a concentration of hope and energy. There are many such men whom it is the fashion to call failures. The born Bohemian, whatever his rank, race, or condition, is no more a failure than the self-made man he fulfils his nature, and what self-made millionaire can do more? The only failure is the man like Harold Vaughan, who wishes to be what he cannot be-not the man like Aaron Goldrick, whose pleasure is in being at one with his destiny. Honesty and respectability are so far from being invariable guides to success and happiness, that if the very thought of either of them had entered what for the sake of courtesy must be called his soul, he would have been the most miserable of men and if happiness is in truth our being's end and aim, he can scarcely be called worse than others for seeking it after his own lights. In spite of all appearance to the contrary, he was only more successful than others-that is all. It is well to remember that there are people with whom the respect of the world and a safe haven of honour and competence are so far from being good things, that to preach to them of the blessings of honest thrift and a good conscience is much the same as to talk of etiquette to a baboon.

But this opens a wide, perhaps dangerous, abyss, into which I have no desire to fall. Still, everybody knows the story of the Scotch minister who, after having exhausted his whole litany, wound up with praying "for the pair De'il-naebody prays for the puir De'il." He was no Devil's advocate because he, in his simple mind, was the first to discover the infinite possibilities of human charity. Lord Lisburn liked sailing in a yacht, Aaron liked cheating: but as pleasure and impulse were at the root of both pursuits, how can such words as "better" or 66 worse" be applied to either, except in those ethics of expediency which charity should scorn to entertain? With some men and women, to say "they are made so" is to say all: they are no more capable of longing for unrevealed light than they are capable of remaking themselves.

The cunning of Aaron Goldrick was too merely instinctive to be called a talent for the use of which he was to be held responsible. It even necessitated a large amount of stupidity by way of alloy. But even his stupidity stood him in good stead. A clever man would have sneaked from the gipsy tents to St. Bavons behind the hedges and along the byeways. Aaron Goldrick did neither. He was well known by sight in half the villages he passed through, either as pedlar or mountebank. When once clear from the oppressive air of London, so unwholesome to his Bohemian nature, he resumed his old character openly, so that his

career of metropolitan manager looked like an impossible parenthesis in his career. Had he been taken and tried for maliciously cutting and wounding with intent to kill, he would almost have been able to prove an alibi out of the mouths of bumpkins and dairy-maids, whose ideas of time were confused. At any rate, he placed himself beyond suspicion.

In a word, he was the one exception to the game of see-saw called life that Harold Vaughan, Zelda, and Claudia Brandt found so inexplicable. He was both up when he was up, and up when he was down.

Did I not once upon a time call Claudia Brandt my heroine ? And where has she been while Zelda the beggar-girl has been thrusting her from her pedestal? The threads of all these lives are so sadly and harshly woven, with but scarcely one golden spider-line of love to beautify the skein that I must sound my trumpet for a parley before the mêlée begins. Where all this chance medley of lives is tending, I know at this instant no more than I know of any other group of lives that destiny or Providence has chosen to tie together with the same cord. I can but see as yet that one life is beginning to grow in such a manner that it will quickly envelope all-whether for good or ill, the uncontrollable destiny that rules over all shadows must decide. Let each, then, take his or her own place in the lists, and fall to.

And first, for the part of chance. If Marietta Romani, the ballet girl, had never danced at Vienna, then Squire Maynard of Marshmead would never have met with her whom that piece of chance had transformed from one weed into another-from the corn-flower of the pavement into Margaret Goldrick, the half witch, half miser. The merchant of St. Bavons might have been ruined, but it would not have been by anyone bearing her name. Claudia would never have seen her, and Zelda would have been neither a reality nor a dream. Aaron Goldrick would never have stabbed Lord Lisburn-Harold Vaughan would not have fallen into such a confusion of troubles. It would require a folio to speculate upon the possibilities and probabilities of what might have happened had it not been for some trivial accident here or there. But, let us give will and character at last their due-there comes a moment when the empire of accident ends. It is not for nothing that Zelda, though blindly, usurps the part of Fortune. If Will must bend to accident, it may at least create the accidents before which it bends. If her castle had been blown away, nothing on earth could dismiss its phantom, or the longing, and consequently the endeavour, to rebuild it upon the old foundations. Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo. If she could not be loved, she could hate: if she could not be at Harold Vaughan's feet, he might be brought to hers.

But how? When she returned from the Oberon that night, all the strength seemed crushed out of her. The watch, ticking mockingly upon the table, was the first sight that met her eyes. Her first impulse was to hurl it into the street-for she felt even now none of the thief's shame. Her second was to hang it up on the most conspicuous part of the wall she could find, so that all the world might see. She pulled out a nail