secret and nauseous errands.

A homely chime of bells was repeated from the town; a ship's fast
strained resinously with the changing tide. "It will be getting on toward
supper," Nettie told him. They walked slowly from the wharf, turned
silently into Derby Street and Hardy on their way home. Beyond the inner
fence of the garden the thick uneven sod reaching to the water was dark
and cool against the luminous flush of evening. A sound of frying and
heavy odor came from the kitchen, and Kate Vollar's voice informed them
that the meal was ready.

Barzil Dunsack bowed his head over the table and pronounced a grace in
startlingly resonant tones, the reverent humility of his words oddly
emphasized by a sort of angry impatience. It seemed as if he at once
subjected himself to his God and expressed a certain dissatisfaction with
His forbearance. Edward Dunsack was plunged in the thought of the
resolution he intended to fulfill that evening.

The throwing away of the opium had lost a part of its symbolic meaning.
It now seemed even a little rash when he could find an immediate highly
profitable market--the opium had cost him seven hundred dollars in China.
But he must, he realized, be firm. Afterwards, in his room facing away
from the street over darkening yards and gables and foliage, he stood
gazing at the chest of mango wood that held the drug. Edward Dunsack
unlocked and lifted the lid. On the tray before him were twenty balls,
each the size of his two fists, wrapped in a hard skin of poppy leaves,
and there was a similar number beneath. It was obvious that he couldn't
carry a tray through the house, and he took out two balls, after which he
secured the remainder.