Droom stood for a few moments in the hurtling snowstorm, abstractedly gazing toward Longacre Square. The chill in his marrow was not from the blizzard that swept down upon him; the gaunt grey look in his face was not that of hunger or want. There was fever in his brain and chill in his heart. He had forgotten Jane's trivial tragedy; his one overwhelming thought was of James Bansemer.

The heavy ulster was unbuttoned and the snowflakes pelted in against his neglected shirt front. A doorman called his attention to the oversight. He came to himself, drew the coat close about his long frame, and hurried off down Fifth Avenue. The storm was so vicious that he boarded a crosstown car at Forty-second Street. A man elbowed him in the narrow vestibule. He looked up and gasped aloud in sudden terror. An instant later he laughed at his fears; the man was not James Bansemer. A cold perspiration started out over his body, however. Through his brain there went racing the ever-revolving cry:

"He'll come straight to me-straight to me!"

The hour was not late, but the blizzard had driven the crowds from the streets. Eighth avenue sidewalks were deserted except for the people who were obliged to brave the storm. As Droom hurried south to his lodgings he became possessed of a racking belief that someone was following close upon his heels—someone who was rushing up to deal him a murderous blow in the back. The old man actually broke into a frantic run in covering the last half block.

It was not until he was in his rooms, with the door bolted that he could rid himself of the dread. The fire had gone out and the light was low. His teeth chattered and his hand shook as he raised the wick in the lamp. The palsy of inexplicable fear was upon him. Kneeling before the stove he began to rebuild the fire. His back was toward the door and he turned an anxious face in that direction from time to time. Footsteps on the stairway sent a new chill through his gaunt frame. They passed on up the next flight, but he waited breathlessly until he heard the door of the apartment above slam noisily.

For half an hour he sat huddled in front of the stove without removing his hat and ulster.

"Curse the luck," he was saying over and over again to himself, sometimes aloud. "Why should he have a pardon? What are the laws for? Curse that meddling old fool Clegg! They'll set him free, and he'll hunt me out, I know he will. He won't forgive me for that day's work. He may be free now-it may have been he who followed me. But no! That's a silly thing to think. It takes weeks and months to get a pardon. Maybe—maybe they won't get it, after all."

He tried to throw off his desperate feeling of apprehension, chattering all sorts of comforting reasons and excuses to himself as he scurried about the rooms with aimless haste. Try as he would, however, when the time came, he could not read—not even of his courage-inspiring Napoleon. The howl of the wind annoyed and appalled him; he caught himself listening intently for sounds above and not of the storm. A nervous, intermittent laugh broke from his lips as he went on cursing himself for a fool to be so disturbed by Graydon's report.

"What have I to fear from him? Why should I let that look of his unnerve me so? Why can't I forget it? It—it didn't mean anything. I'm a fool to think of it. Nearly two years ago, that was. Why, he may be—" A new thought chased the old one out before it was formed. His eyes caught sight of one of his completed models, standing in the corner. It was the model for the guillotine.

For a long time he sat staring at the thing, a hundred impressions forming and reforming in his brain.

"I wonder if I'll really die before he is liberated," he was saying dumbly to himself. "I wonder if I will. There's no sign of it now. I'm strong and well enough to live for years. Suppose he is freed inside of a month or two, what then? By Heaven, I'd be losing the dearest hope of my whole life. My last sight of him—that beautiful vision behind the bars—would be spoiled, undone, wiped out. He'd be as free as I. I won't die inside of a month, I'm sure. He'd come here and laugh at me and he'd kill me in the end. God! I know he would. He'd have the joy of seeing my pain and terror and defeat—he'd see me LAST! I'd be bloody and crushed and—"

He checked himself in the midst of these dire forebodings to rise suddenly and cross to the ghastly looking frame with the cords, the hinges, and the great broadaxe that lay harmlessly in the grooves at the top. For many minutes he stood and gazed at the axe, his flesh as cold as ice. Then he tested the cords. The axe dropped heavily to the block below. He smiled with cunning triumph at his own skill.

The odour of geranium leaves assailed his nostrils. With an ugly impulse he turned and swept the pots from the window box, scattering them over the floor.

"I'm in a devil of a humour," he laughed as he surveyed the wreck. "Something's gone wrong with me. I've never mistreated my flowers before." He lifted the broadaxe to its place, tenderly, almost lovingly. "By my soul, it's a beautiful piece of work. It's as sure as the grave itself."

Again he stood off and looked at the infernal bit of his own handiwork, his eyes glistening with dread of the thing. He turned and fled to the opposite side of the room, keeping his back toward the silent guillotine which seemed to be calling to him with mocking yet fascinating persistency.

"Curse the thing," he groaned. "Damn it, I didn't make it for my own use. What is the matter with me?" He glanced slyly, fearfully over his shoulder and then faced the thing deliberately, his jaws set, his eyes staring.

"It is a quick way—a sure way," he muttered. "I haven't anything to live for and but a few years at most. Nobody cares whether I live or die—not even I. James Bansemer could not batter me down, as he surely will, if I—"

He crossed to an old chest and unlocked its lid with feverish haste. A bundle of papers came up in the grasp of his tense fingers. Casting dreadful glances at the insistent axe, he seated himself at the table and began looking over the papers.

"He won't take his father's rotten money, but he'll take mine. It's honest. It represents wages honestly, bitterly earned. There's more than twenty thousand to give him. He'll be surprised. Twenty thousand." He laid the first paper, his will drawn in favour of Graydon Bansemer, signed and addressed; upon the table, and then carelessly tossed the other documents into the chest. "By the Lord Harry, I'll have the best of James Bansemer yet. His boy will take my money even though he spurns his. God, I wish I could see him when he knows all this. It would be glorious."

He fingered the document for a tense moment, and then arose to remove his coat and vest. These he hung away in his closet with all his customary carefulness. In the middle of the room he stopped, his quivering face turned toward the gaunt thing of execution. His feet seemed nailed to the floor; his brain was urging him to go on with the horrid deed, his body was rebelling. The torture of terror was overpowering him.

Suddenly he found his strength of limb. With a guttural howl he clasped his hands to his eyes and fled blindly into his bedroom. Hurling his long, shivering frame upon the bed, he tried to shut out the enticing call of the thing of death. How long he quivered there, shuddering and struggling, he could not have told. In the end—and as suddenly as he had fled—he leaped up and with a shrill laugh dashed back into the other room.

There was no hesitation in his body now. With a maniacal glee he rushed upon the devilish contrivance in the corner, tearing the axe from its place with ruthless hands. Throughout the building rang the sounds of smashing wood, furious blows of steel upon wood, and high above the din arose the laugh of Elias Droom. In two minutes, the guillotine lay in chips and splinters about the room—destroyed even as it was on the point of destroying him.

Dropping back against the wall, wet with perspiration, a triumphant grin upon his face, Elias surveyed the wreckage. His muscles relaxed and his eyes lost the dread that had filled them. The smile actually grew into an expression of sweetness and peace that his face had never known before.

As he staggered to a chair close by, a great sigh of relief broke from his lips.

"There!" he gasped. "It's over! it's over! My head is on my shoulders—it really is after all! It is not rolling into the corner—no! no! By my head—my own head, too—it was a close call for you, Elias Droom. Now, I'll take what comes. I'll wait for James Bansemer! I'll stick it out to the end. If he comes, he'll find me here. I've conquered the infernal death that stood waiting so long for me in that corner—and I never suspected it, either. God, how near it was to me! It stood there and waited for me to come. It knew that I would come sooner or later! But I've smashed it—it's gone! It's not there!"

With eager hands he gathered up the pieces of wood and cast them into the stove. As the remains of that frightful minister of death crackled and spit with defeated venom, Elias Droom calmly pulled on his worn dressing gown, lighted his pipe and cocked his feet upon the stove rail, a serene look in his eyes, a chuckle in his throat.