I wrote fully to his father and did not get a word in reply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing! Perhaps they did not want to know." 'The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly's remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors.

Almost! Perhaps wholly.

Who can tell what flattering view he had induced himself to take of his own suicide?
'"Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you think ?" asked Jones, pressing his palms together.

"Why?
It beats me! Why ?" He slapped his low and wrinkled forehead.

"If he had been poor and old and in debt--and never a show--or else mad.