AT THE SWORD'S POINT Dagworthy in these days could scarcely be deemed a man, with humanity's plenitude of interacting motives, of contrasting impulses, of varying affections.

He was become one passion, a personified appetite.

He went through his routine, at the mill and elsewhere, in a mechanical way; all the time his instincts and habits subjugated themselves to the frenzy which chafed at the centres of his life.

In his face you saw the monomaniac.

His eyes were bloodshot; his lips had a parched yellowness of tone; his skin seemed dry and burning.