entered with a telegram, which she handed to Brian. He tore it open as she withdrew, and glancing over it gave a cry of horror, and left it flutter to his feet.
Calton turned rapidly on hearing this cry, and seeing him fall into a chair with a ghastly white face, snatched up the telegram and read it. When he did so his face grew as pale and startled as Fitzgerald's, and, lifting his hand, he said solemnly—
"It is the judgment of God!"
CHAPTER XXX.
NEMESIS.
Men, according to the old Greek, "were the sport of the gods," who, enthroned on high Olympus, put evil desires into the hearts of mortals, and, when evil actions were the outcome of evil thoughts, amused themselves by watching the ineffectual efforts made by their victims to escape a relentless deity called Nemesis, who exacted a penalty for their evil deeds. It was no doubt very amusing—to the gods, but it is questionable if the men found it so. They had their revenge, however, for, weary of plaguing puny mortals,who whimpered and cried when they saw they could not escape, the inevitable Nemesis turned her attention from actors to spectators and swept away the whole Olympian hierarchy. She smashed their altars, pulled down their statues and after she had completed her malicious work found that she had vulgarly speaking, been cutting off her nose to spite her face, for she, too, became an object of derision and disbelief, and was forced to retire to the same obscurity to which she had relegated the other deities. Men, however, found out that she had not been altogether useless as a scapegoat upon which to lay the blame of their own shortcomings, so they created a new deity called Fate, and laid any misfortune which happened to them to her charge. Her worship is still very popular, especially among lazy and unlucky people, who never bestir themselves on the ground that whether they do so or not their lives are already settled by Fate. After all, the true religion of Fate has been preached by George Eliot, when she says that our lives are the outcome of our actions. Set up any idol you please
