The long-suffering chair creaked under him as he flung himself back in it, his pasty, heavy-jowled face was ghastly under the lash of despairing thought.  Only a miser, one of those wretched creatures who live only for the contemplation of their hoarded wealth, could understand the feelings of the miserable man as he lay back in his chair.

The man who had thus reduced the money-lender must have understood his nature as did the inquisitors of old understand the weaknesses of their victims.  For surely he could have found no other vulnerable spot in the great man’s composition.

The first shock of the trooper’s news began to pass.  Lablache’s mind began to balance itself again.  Such a state of nerves as was his could not last and the man remain sane.  Possibly the thought that he was still a rich man came to his aid.  Possibly the thought of hundreds of thousands of dollars sunk in perfect securities, in various European centers, toned down the grievousness of his losses.  Whatever it was he grew calmer, and with calmness his scheming nature reasserted itself.

He moved from his seat and helped himself liberally to the whisky which was in his cabinet.  He needed the generous spirit, and drank it off at a gulp.  His chair behind him creaked.  He started.  His ashen face became more ghastly in its hue.  He looked round fearfully.  Then he understood, and he wheezed heavily.  Once more he sat himself down, and the warming spirit steadily did its work.

Suddenly his mind leapt forward, as it were, from its stagnatory condition of abject fear.  It traveled swiftly, urged by a pursuing dread over plans for the future.  The guiding star of his thought was safety.  At all costs he must find safety for his property and himself.  So long as Retief was at large there could be no safety for him in Foss River.  He must get away.  He must get away, bearing with him the fruits which yet remained to him of his life’s toil.  He had contemplated retiring before.  His retirement from business would mean ruin to many of those who had borrowed from him he knew, and to those on whose property he held mortgages as security.  But that could not be helped.  He was not going to allow himself to suffer through what he considered any humanitarian weakness.  Yes, he would retire—­get away from the reach of Retief and his companions, and—­ah!

His thoughts merged into another channel—­a channel which, under the stress of his terrors, had for the moment been obscured.  He suddenly thought of the Allandales.  Here for the instant was a stumbling block.  Or should he renounce his passion for Jacky?  He drummed thoughtfully with his finger-tips upon the arms of his chair.

No, why should he give her up?  Something of his old nerve was returning.  He held all the cards.  He knew he could, by foreclosing, ruin “Poker” John.  Why should he give the girl up, and see her calmly secured by that cursed Bunning-Ford?  His bilious eyes half closed and his sparse eyebrows drew together in a deep concentration of thought.  Then presently his forehead smoothed, and his lashless eyes gleamed wickedly.  He rose heavily to his feet and labored to and fro across the floor, with his beefy hands clasped behind his back.