Once or twice he flung a furtive glance about him. His stripped
and naked soul was enduring a foretaste of the Judgment Day. The whip of
scorn with which the lawyer lashed him cut into his shrinking
sensibilities, and left him a welter of raw and livid wales. Good God! why
had he not known it would be like this? He was paying for his treachery and
usury, and it was being burnt into him that as the years passed he must
continue to pay in self-contempt and the distrust of his fellows.
The case had come to a hearing before Judge Hughes, who was not one of
Ridgway's creatures. That on its merits it would be decided in favor of the
Consolidated was a foregone conclusion. It was after the judge had rendered
the expected decision that the dramatic moment of the day came to gratify
the seasoned court frequenters.
Eaton, trying to slip as quietly as possible from the room, came face to
face with his former chief. For an interminable instant the man he had
betrayed, blocking the way squarely, held the trembling wretch in the blaze
of his scorn. Ridgway's contemptuous eyes sifted to the ingrate's soul
until it shriveled.
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