“Where is Antonio?” asked Emma as she mounted.

“He has gone on ahead,” I answered, “to be sure that the road is clear; he will meet us beyond the mountains.”

Poor Antonio!  I wonder what became of him; he was a good fellow, and I hope that he recovered.  It grieved me much to leave him, but after all I had my own safety to think of, and still more that of Emma, who had grown very dear to me.  Perhaps one day I shall find him “beyond the mountains,” but, if so, that is a meeting from which I expect no joy.

The rest of our journey was strange enough, but it has nothing to do with this history.  Indeed, I have only touched upon these long past adventures in a far land because they illustrate the curious fatality by the workings of which every important event of my life has taken place under the dreadful shadow of smallpox.  I was born under that shadow, I wedded under it, I—­but the rest shall be told in its proper order.

In the end we reached Mexico City in safety, and there Emma and I were married.  Ten days later we were on board ship steaming for England.

CHAPTER III

SIR JOHN BELL

Now it is that I came to the great and terrible event of my life, which in its result turned me into a false witness and a fraud, and bound upon my spirit a weight of blood-guiltiness greater than a man is often called upon to bear.  As I have not scrupled to show I have constitutional weaknesses—­more, I am a sinner, I know it; I have sinned against the code of my profession, and have preached a doctrine I knew to be false, using all my skill and knowledge to confuse and pervert the minds of the ignorant.  And yet I am not altogether responsible for these sins, which in truth in the first place were forced upon me by shame and want and afterwards by the necessities of my ambition.  Indeed, in that dark and desperate road of deceit there is no room to turn; the step once taken can never be retraced.

But if I have sinned, how much greater is the crime of the man who swore away my honour and forced me through those gateways?  Surely on his head and not on mine should rest the burden of my deeds; yet he prospered all his life, and I have been told that his death was happy and painless.  This man’s career furnishes one of the few arguments that to my sceptical mind suggest the existence of a place of future reward and punishment, for how is it possible that so great a villain should reap no fruit from his rich sowing of villainy?  If it is possible, then verily this world is the real hell wherein the wicked are lords and the good their helpless and hopeless slaves.

Emma Becker when she became my wife brought with her a small dowry of about five thousand dollars, or a thousand pounds, and this sum we both agreed would be best spent in starting me in professional life.  It was scarcely sufficient to enable me to buy a practice of the class which I desired, so I determined that I would set to work to build one up, as with my ability and record I was certain that I could do.  By preference, I should have wished to begin in London, but there the avenue to success is choked, and I had not the means to wait until by skill and hard work I could force my way along it.