and that is my guilt, in their villanous eyes. As long as that infamous Poole gave me enough for my humble wants, I was a reformed man. I wish to keep reformed. Very little suffices for me now. As you say, Australia may be the best place for me. When shall we sail?"
"Are you serious?"
"To be sure."
"Then I will inquire the days on which the vessels start. You—can call on me at my own old home, and all shall be arranged. Oh, Jasper Losely, do not avoid this last chance of escape from the perils that gather round you."
"No; I am sick of life—of all things except repose. Arabella, I suffer horrible pain."
He groaned, for he spoke truly. At that moment the gnaw of the monster anguish, which fastens on the nerves like a wolf's tooth, was so keen that he longed to swell his groan into a roar. The old fable of Hercules in the poisoned tunic was surely invented by some skilled physiologist to denote the truth that it is only in the strongest frames that pain can be pushed into its extremest torture. The heart of the grim woman was instantly and thoroughly softened. She paused; she made him lean on her arm; she wiped the drops from his brow; she addressed in the most soothing tones of pity. The spasm passed away suddenly, as it does in neuralgic agonies, and with it any gratitude or any remorse in the breast of the sufferer.
"Yes," he said, "I will call on you; but meanwhile I am without a farthing. Oh, do not fear that if you helped me now I should again shun you. I have no other resource left; nor have I now the spirit I once had. I no longer now laugh at fatigue and danger."
"But will you swear by all that you yet hold sacred—if, alas! there be aught which is sacred to you—that you will not again seek the company of those men who are conspiring to entrap you into the hangman's hands?"
"Seek them again, the ungrateful, cowardly blackguards! No, no; I promise you that—solemnly; it is medical aid that I want; it is rest, I tell you—rest, rest, rest."
Arabella Crane drew forth her purse. "Take what you will," said she, gently. Jasper, whether from the desire to deceive her, or because her alms were really so distasteful to his strange kind of pride that he stinted to bare necessity the appeal to them, contented himself with a third or a fourth of the sovereigns that the purse contained; and after a few words of thanks and promises he left her side, and soon vanished in the fog that
