While this revelry was growing more fast and furious below Adam was
still sitting quietly at home, with Eve by his side using her every art
to dispel the gloom by which her lover's spirits were clouded--not so
much on account of the recent fight, for Adam apprehended no such great
score of danger on that head. It was true that of late such frays had
been of rare occurrence, yet many had taken place before, and with
disastrous results, and yet the chief actors in them still lived to
tell the tale; so that it was not altogether that which disturbed him,
although it greatly added to his former moodiness, which had originally
sprung out of the growing distaste to the life he led.

The inaction of the time spent in dodging about, with nothing to occupy
him, nothing to interest him, had turned Adam's thoughts inward, and
made him determine to have done with these ventures, in which, except
as far as the gain went, he really had nothing in common with the
companions who took part in them. But, as he very well knew, it was far
easier to take this resolution in thought than it was to put it into
action. Once let the idea of his leaving them get abroad, and
difficulties would confront him whichever way he turned: obstacles
would block his path and suspicion dodge his footsteps.

His comrades, though not very far-seeing men, were quite sharp enough
to estimate the danger of losing sight of one who was in possession of
all their secrets, and who could at any moment lay his finger upon
every hiding-place in their district.

Adam himself had often listened to--and, in company with others,
silently commended--a story told of years gone by, when a brother of
the owner of the Stamp and Go, one Herkles Johns, had been pressed into
the king's service, and had there acquitted himself so gallantly that