“Sit down,” he said, pointing to a chair.  The room was an uncomfortable office, with no fire.  He himself took a seat deliberately at a desk, whence he could watch Ida, and began to read.  As he did so, his face remained unmoved, but he looked away occasionally, as if to reflect.

“What’s your name?” he asked, when he had finished, beginning, at the same time, to tear the letter into very small pieces, which he threw into a waste-paper basket.

“Ida, sir,—­Ida Starr.”

“Starr, eh?” He looked at her very keenly, and, still looking, and still tearing up the letter, went on in a hard, unmodulated voice.  “Well, Ida Starr, it seems your mother wants to put you in the way of earning your living.”  The child looked up in fear and astonishment.  “You can carry a message?  You’ll say to your mother that I’ll undertake to do what I can for you, on one condition, and that is that she puts you in my hands and never sees you again.”

“Oh, I can’t leave mother!” burst from the child’s lips involuntarily, her horror overcoming her fear of the speaker.

“I didn’t ask you if you could,” remarked Mr. Woodstock, with something like a sneer, tapping the desk with the fingers of his right hand.  “I asked whether you could carry a message.  Can you, or not?”

“Yes, I can,” stammered Ida.

“Then take that message, and tell your mother it’s all I’ve got to say.  Run away.”

He rose and stood with his hands behind him, watching her.  Ida made what haste she could to the door, and sped out into the street.

CHAPTER III

ANTECEDENTS

It would not have been easy to find another instance of a union of keen intellect and cold heart so singular as that displayed in the character of Abraham Woodstock.  The man s life had been strongly consistent from the beginning; from boyhood a powerful will had borne him triumphantly over every difficulty, and in each decisive instance his will had been directed by a shrewd intelligence which knew at once the strength of its own resources and the multiplied weaknesses of the vast majority of men.  In the pursuit of his ends he would tolerate no obstacle which his strength would suffice to remove.  In boyhood and early manhood the exuberance of his physical power was wont to manifest itself in brutal self-assertion.  At school he was the worst kind of bully, his ferociousness tempered by no cowardice.  Later on, he learned that a too demonstrative bearing would on many occasions interfere with his success in life; he toned down his love of muscular victory, and only allowed himself an outbreak every now and then, when he felt he could afford the indulgence.  Put early into an accountant’s office, and losing his father about the same time (the parent, who had a diseased heart, was killed by an outburst of fury to which Abraham gave way on some trivial occasion), he had henceforth to fight