So, on this night, as usual, there rose up toward the stars a throbbing murmur from our village—­a wild chaos of sound, which we must strive to analyse, extracting from the hurly-burly each separate tune it may concern us to hear.

Captain Devereux was in his lodging.  He was comparatively tranquil now; but a savage and impious despair possessed him.  Serene outwardly—­he would not let the vulgar see his scars and sores; and was one of those proud spirits who build to themselves desolate places.

Little Puddock was the man with whom he had least reserve.  Puddock was so kindly, and so true and secret, and cherished beside, so great an admiration for him, that he greeted him rather kindly at a moment when another visitor would have fared scurvily enough.  Puddock was painfully struck with his pallor, his wild and haggard eye, and something stern and brooding in his handsome face, which was altogether new and shocking to him.

‘I’ve been thinking, Puddock,’ he said; ’and thought with me has grown strangely like despair—­and that’s all.  Why, man, think—­what is there for me?—­all my best stakes I’ve lost already; and I’m fast losing myself.  How different, Sir, is my fate from others?  Worse men than I—­every way incomparably worse—­and d——­ them, they prosper, while I go down the tide.  ‘Tisn’t just!’ And he swore a great oath. ’’Tis enough to make a man blaspheme.  I’ve done with life—­I hate it.  I’ll volunteer.  ’Tis my first thought in the morning, and my last at night, how well I’d like a bullet through my brain or heart.  D——­ the world, d——­ feeling, d——­ memory.  I’m not a man that can always be putting prudential restraints upon myself.  I’ve none of those plodding ways.  The cursed fools that spoiled me in my childhood, and forsake me now, have all to answer for—­I charge them with my ruin.’  And he launched a curse at them (meaning his aunt) which startled the plump soul of honest little Puddock.

‘You must not talk that way, Devereux,’ he said, still a good deal more dismayed by his looks than his words.  ’Why are you so troubled with vapours and blue devils?’

‘Nowhy!’ said Devereux, with a grim smile.

’My dear Devereux, I say, you mustn’t talk in that wild way.  You—­you talk like a ruined man!’

‘And I so comfortable!’

’Why, to be sure, Dick, you have had some little rubs, and, maybe, your follies and your vexations; but, hang it, you are young; you can’t get experience—­at least, so I’ve found it—­without paying for it.  You mayn’t like it just now; but it’s well worth the cost.  Your worries and miscarriages, dear Richard, will make you steady.’

‘Steady!’ echoed Devereux, like a man thinking of something far away.

‘Ay, Dick—­you’ve sown your wild oats.’