conference frequented by Offitt, and he had at once inferred that Sleeny and she were either engaged to be married or on the straight road toward it.  It would be a profanation of the word to say that he loved her at first sight.  But his scoundrel heart was completely captivated so far as was possible to a man of his sort.  He was filled and fired with a keen cupidity of desire to possess and own such beauty and grace.  He railed against marriage, as he did against religion and order, as an invention of priests and tyrants to enslave and degrade mankind; but he would gladly have gone to any altar whatever in company with Maud Matchin.  He could hardly have said whether he loved or hated her the more.  He loved her much as the hunter loves the fox he is chasing to its death.  He wanted to destroy anything which kept her away from him:  her lover, if she had one; her pride, her modesty, her honor, if she were fancy-free.  Aware of Sleeny’s good looks, if not of his own ugliness, he hated them both for the comeliness that seemed to make them natural mates for each other.  But it was not in his methods to proceed rashly with either.  He treated Maud with distant respect, and increased his intimacy with Sleeny until he found, to his delight, that he was not the prosperous lover that he feared.  But he still had apprehensions that Sleeny’s assiduity might at last prevail, and lost no opportunity to tighten the relations between them, to poison and pervert the man who was still a possible rival.  By remaining his most intimate friend, he could best be informed of all that occurred in the Matchin family.

One evening, as Sam was about leaving his work, Fergus Ferguson said: 

“You’ll not come here the morn.  You’re wanted till the house—­a bit o’ work in the library.  They’ll be tellin’ you there.”

This was faithfully reported by Sam to his confessor that same night.

“Well, you are in luck.  I wish I had your chance,” said Offitt.

Sam opened his blue eyes in mute wonder.

“Well, what’s the chance, and what would you do with it, ef you had it?”

Offitt hesitated a moment before replying.

“Oh, I was just a jokin’.  I meant it was such an honor for common folks like us to git inside of the palace of a high-toned cuss like Farnham; and the fact is, Sammy,” he continued, more seriously, “I would like to see the inside of some of these swell places.  I am a student of human nature, you know, in its various forms.  I consider the lab’rin’ man as the normal healthy human—­that is, if he don’t work too hard.  I consider wealth as a kind of disease; wealth and erristocracy is a kind of dropsy.  Now, the true reformer is like a doctor,—­he wants to know all about diseases, by sight and handlin’!  I would like to study the symptoms of erristocracy in Farnham’s house—­right in the wards of the hospital.”

“Well, that beats me,” said Sam.  “I’ve been in a lot of fine houses on Algonquin Avenue, and I never seen anything yet that favored a hospital.”