determination were so forcibly painted as in Beckwith's then.

'Look at me, you villain,' said Beckwith, 'and see me as I really
am. I took these rooms, to make them a trap for you. I came into
them as a drunkard, to bait the trap for you. You fell into the
trap, and you will never leave it alive. On the morning when you
last went to Mr. Sampson's office, I had seen him first. Your plot
has been known to both of us, all along, and you have been counter-
plotted all along. What? Having been cajoled into putting that
prize of two thousand pounds in your power, I was to be done to
death with brandy, and, brandy not proving quick enough, with
something quicker? Have I never seen you, when you thought my
senses gone, pouring from your little bottle into my glass? Why,
you Murderer and Forger, alone here with you in the dead of night,
as I have so often been, I have had my hand upon the trigger of a
pistol, twenty times, to blow your brains out!'

This sudden starting up of the thing that he had supposed to be his
imbecile victim into a determined man, with a settled resolution to
hunt him down and be the death of him, mercilessly expressed from
head to foot, was, in the first shock, too much for him. Without
any figure of speech, he staggered under it. But there is no
greater mistake than to suppose that a man who is a calculating
criminal, is, in any phase of his guilt, otherwise than true to
himself, and perfectly consistent with his whole character. Such a
man commits murder, and murder is the natural culmination of his
course; such a man has to outface murder, and will do it with
hardihood and effrontery. It is a sort of fashion to express
surprise that any notorious criminal, having such crime upon his
conscience, can so brave it out. Do you think that if he had it on