The silence was profound, not a sound was audible but the creaking of his clothes as he leaned heavily against the edge of the desk and drew his agitated breath.  He raised the candle and bent his gloomy face over the paper which he held before him.  It was a note of his late firm indorsed by Lawrence Newt & Co.  He gazed at his uncle’s signature intently, studying every line, every dot—­so intently that it seemed as if his eyes would burn it.  Then putting down the candle and spreading the name before him, he drew a sheet of tissue paper from a drawer and placed it over it.  The writing was perfectly legible—­the finest stroke showed through the thin tissue.  He filled a pen and carefully drew the lines of the signature upon the tissue paper—­then raised it—­the fac-simile was perfect.

Taking a thicker piece of paper, he laid the note before him, and slowly, carefully, copied the signature.  The result was a resemblance, but nothing more.  He held the paper in the flame of the candle until it was consumed.  He tried again.  He tried many times.  Each trial was a greater success.

Tearing a check from his book he filled the blanks and wrote below the name of Lawrence Newt & Co., and found, upon comparison with the indorsement, that it was very like.  Abel Newt grinned; his lips moved:  he was muttering “Dear Uncle Lawrence.”

He stopped writing, and carefully burned, as before, the check and all the paper.  Then covering his face with his hands as he sat, he said to himself, as the hot, hurried thoughts flickered through his mind,

“Yes, yes, Mrs. Lawrence Newt, I shall not be master of Pinewood, but I shall be of your husband, and he will be master of your property.  Practice makes perfect.  Dear Uncle Lawrence shall be my banker.”

His brain reeled and whirled as he sat.  He remembered the words of his friend the General:  “Abel Newt was not born to fail.”

“No, by God!” he shouted, springing up, and clenching his hands.

He staggered.  The walls of the room, the floor, the ceiling, the furniture heaved and rolled before his eyes.  In the wild tumult that overwhelmed his brain as if he were sinking in gurgling whirlpools—­the peaceful lawn of Pinewood—­the fight with Gabriel—­the running horses—­the “Farewell forever, Miss Wayne”—­the shifting chances of his subsequent life—­Grace Plumer blazing with diamonds—­the figure of his father drumming with white fingers upon his office-desk—­Lawrence and Gabriel pushing him out—­they all swept before his consciousness in the moment during which he threw out his hands wildly, clutched at the air, and plunged headlong upon the floor, senseless.

CHAPTER LXXV.

REMINISCENCE.