CHAPTER XXI.
IN WHICH CAPTAIN LAKE VISITS HIS SISTER'S SICK-BED.
Captain Lake wanted rest — sleep — quiet thoughts
at all events. When he was alone he was at once in a
state of fever and gloom, and seemed always watching for
something. His strange eyes glanced now this way, now
that with a fierce restlessness — now to the window — now
to the door — and you would have said he was listening
intently to some indistinct and too distant conversation af-
fecting him vitally, there was such a look of fear and con-
jecture always in his face.
He bolted his door and unlocked his dressing case, and
from a little silver box in that glittering repository he
took, one after the other, two or three little wafers of a
dark hue, and placed them successively on his tongue, and
suffered them to melt, and so swallowed them. They were
not liquorice. I am afraid Captain Lake dabbled a little
in opium. He was not a great adept — yet, at least —
like those gentlemen who can swallow five hundred drops
of laudanum at a sitting. But he knew the virtues of the
drug, and cultivated its acquaintance, and was oftener un-
der its influence than perhaps any mortal, except himself,
suspected.
Stanley Lake would have given more than he could well
afford that it were that day week, and he no worse off.
Why did time limp so tediously away with him, prolong-
ing his anguish gratuitously? He felt truculently, and
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