a favorite client, he had lost his faith in human nature and forty per cent.
Mr. Montague Fitzgerald forgot the stern business principles which had hitherto governed his, from a business point of view, exemplary career, and allowed himself to become a mere human being burning for revenge.
His vengeance lay ready to his hand in the form most congenial to his spirit. He had made it his business to acquire an exact knowledge of the Honorable John Ruffin's position, a far more exact knowledge of it indeed than the Honorable John Ruffin had ever possessed himself. He knew to a penny the amount of the Oxford debts which the Honorable John Ruffin was paying off by instalments; he bought them up with the intention of making his life a burden to him by setting the law at work to make him pay them forthwith.
Thus it came about that just before breakfast one morning, what time Pollyooly, her angel brow puckered by an anxious frown, was carefully grilling his bacon, the Honorable John Ruffin stood on his hearth-rug, his brow puckered by a yet more anxious frown, reading a letter from the lawyer who
