the baseless sense of a reprieve, his three absences; and the result of
the third was to confirm the after-effect of the second.

On his return that night--the night succeeding his last intermission--he
stood in the hall and looked up the staircase with a certainty more
intimate than any he had yet known. "He's _there_, at the top, and
waiting--not, as in general, falling back for disappearance. He's
holding his ground, and it's the first time--which is a proof, isn't it?
that something has happened for him." So Brydon argued with his hand on
the banister and his foot on the lowest stair; in which position he felt
as never before the air chilled by his logic. He himself turned cold in
it, for he seemed of a sudden to know what now was involved. "Harder
pressed?--yes, he takes it in, with its thus making clear to him that
I've come, as they say, 'to stay.' He finally doesn't like and can't
bear it, in the sense, I mean, that his wrath, his menaced interest, now
balances with his dread. I've hunted him till he has 'turned'; that, up
there, is what has happened--he's the fanged or the antlered animal
brought at last to bay." There came to him, as I say--but determined by
an influence beyond my notation!--the acuteness of this certainty; under
which however the next moment he had broken into a sweat that he would as
little have consented to attribute to fear as he would have dared
immediately to act upon it for enterprise. It marked none the less a
prodigious thrill, a thrill that represented sudden dismay, no doubt, but
also represented, and with the selfsame throb, the strangest, the most
joyous, possibly the next minute almost the proudest, duplication of
consciousness.

"He has been dodging, retreating, hiding, but now, worked up to anger,
he'll fight!"--this intense impression made a single mouthful, as it
were, of terror and applause. But what was wondrous was that the