too, of ultimately catching the good attorney napping, and leading him
too, bound and docile, into his ergastulum, although he was himself just
now in jeopardy from that quarter. James Dutton, too. Sooner or later he
would get Master Jim into a fix, and hold him also spell-bound in the
same sort of nightmare.

It was not from malice. The worthy attorney had much more of that leaven
than he. Stanley Lake did not care to smash any man, except such as stood
in his way. He had a mercantile genius, and never exercised his craft,
violence and ferocity, on men or objects, when no advantage was
obtainable by so doing. When, however, fortune so placed them that one or
other must go to the wall, Captain Stanley Lake was awfully unscrupulous.
But, having disabled, and struck him down, and won the stakes, he would
have given what remained of him his cold, white hand to shake, or sipped
claret with him at his own table, and told him stories, and entertained
him with sly, sarcastic sallies, and thought how he could make use of him
in an amicable way.

But Stanley Lake's cold, commercial genius, his craft and egotism, were
frustrated occasionally by his temper, which, I am afraid, with all its
external varnish, was of the sort which is styled diabolical. People said
also, what is true of most terrorists, that he was himself quite capable
of being frightened; and also, that he lied with too fertile an audacity:
and, like a man with too many bills afloat, forgot his endorsements
occasionally, and did not recognise his own acceptances when presented
after an interval. Such were some of this dangerous fellow's weak points.
But on the whole it was by no means a safe thing to cross his path; and
few who did so came off altogether scathless.

He pursued his way with a vague feeling of danger and rage, having