A man who can, in such extremities of despair, go premeditatingly to his pillow, obeys an animal instinct in pursuit of oblivion, that will befriend his nerves.  Algernon awoke in deep darkness, with a delicious sensation of hunger.  He jumped up.  Six hundred and fifty pounds of the money remained intact; and he was joyful.  He struck a light to look at his watch:  the watch had stopped;—­that was a bad sign.  He could not forget it.  Why had his watch stopped?  A chilling thought as to whether predestination did not govern the world, allayed all tumult in his mind.  He dressed carefully, and soon heard a great City bell, with horrid gulfs between the strokes, tell him that the hour was eleven toward midnight.  “Not late,” he said.

“Who’d have thought it?” cried a voice on the landing of the stairs, as he went forth.

It was Sedgett.

Algernon had one inclination to strangle, and another to mollify the wretch.

“Why, sir, I’ve been lurking heer for your return from your larks.  Never guessed you was in.”

“It’s no use,” Algernon began.

“Ay; but it is, though,” said Sedgett, and forced his way into the room.  “Now, just listen.  I’ve got a young woman I want to pack out o’ the country.  I must do it, while I’m a—­a bachelor boy.  She must go, or we shall be having shindies.  You saw how she caught me out of a cab.  She’s sure to be in the place where she ain’t wanted.  She goes to America.  I’ve got to pay her passage, and mine too.  Here’s the truth:  she thinks I’m off with her.  She knows I’m bankrup’ at home.  So I am.  All the more reason for her thinking me her companion.  I get her away by train to the vessel, and on board, and there I give her the slip.

“Ship’s steaming away by this time t’morrow night.  I’ve paid for her—­ and myself too, she thinks.  Leave it to me.  I’ll manage all that neatly enough.  But heer’s the truth:  I’m stumped.  I must, and I will have fifty; I don’t want to utter ne’er a threat.  I want the money, and if you don’t give it, I break off; and you mind this, Mr. Blancove:  you don’t come off s’ easy, if I do break off, mind.  I know all about your relations, and by—!  I’ll let ’em know all about you.  Why, you’re as quiet heer, sir, as if you was miles away, in a wood cottage, and ne’er a dog near.”

So Algernon was thinking; and without a light, save the gas lamp in the square, moreover.

They wrangled for an hour.  When Algernon went forth a second time, he was by fifty pounds poorer.  He consoled himself by thinking that the money had only anticipated its destination as arranged, and it became a partial gratification to him to reflect that he had, at any rate, paid so much of the sum, according to his bond in assuming possession of it.

And what were to be his proceedings?  They were so manifestly in the hands of fate, that he declined to be troubled on that head.