If Barry showed his impatience and discontent as long as the daily bulletins told him that Anty was still alive, though dying, it may easily be imagined that he did not hide his displeasure when he first heard that she was alive and better.  His brow grew very black, his cheeks flushed, the drops of sweat stood on his forehead, and he said, speaking through his closed teeth, “D——­ it, doctor, you don’t mean to tell me she’s recovering now?”

“I don’t say, Mr Lynch, whether she is or no; but it’s certain the fever has left her.  She’s very weak, very weak indeed; I never knew a person to be alive and have less life in ’em; but the fever has left her and there certainly is hope.”

“Hope!” said Barry—­“why, you told me she couldn’t live!”

“I don’t say she will, Mr Lynch, but I say she may.  Of course we must do what we can for her,” and the doctor took his sherry and went his way.

How horrible then was the state of Barry’s mind!  For a time he was absolutely stupified with despair; he stood fixed on the spot where the doctor had left him, realising, bringing home to himself, the tidings which he had heard.  His sister to rise again, as though it were from the dead, to push him off his stool!  Was he to fall again into that horrid low abyss in which even the Tuam attorney had scorned him; in which he had even invited that odious huxter’s son to marry his sister and live in his house?  What! was he again to be reduced to poverty, to want, to despair, by her whom he so hated?  Could nothing be done?—­Something must be done—­she should not be, could not be allowed to leave that bed of sickness alive.  “There must be an end of her,” he muttered through his teeth, “or she’ll drive me mad!” And then he thought how easily he might have smothered her, as she lay there clasping his hand, with no one but themselves in the room; and as the thought crossed his brain his eyes nearly started from his head, the sweat ran down his face, he clutched the money in his trousers’ pocket till the coin left an impression on his flesh, and he gnashed his teeth till his jaws ached with his own violence.  But then, in that sick-room, he had been afraid of her; he could not have touched her then for the wealth of the Bank of England!—­but now!

The devil sat within him, and revelled with full dominion over his soul:  there was then no feeling left akin to humanity to give him one chance of escape; there was no glimmer of pity, no shadow of remorse, no sparkle of love, even though of a degraded kind; no hesitation in the will for crime, which might yet, by God’s grace, lead to its eschewal:  all there was black, foul, and deadly, ready for the devil’s deadliest work.  Murder crouched there, ready to spring, yet afraid;—­cowardly, but too thirsty alter blood to heed its own fears.  Theft,—­low, pilfering, pettifogging, theft; avarice, lust, and impotent, scalding hatred.  Controlled by these the black blood rushed quick to and from his heart, filling him with sensual desires below the passions of a brute, but denying him one feeling or one appetite for aught that was good or even human.