This
other party had once played me a very mean trick. I owed him a grudge, I
felt awfully savage at the time, and I vowed that, when I got a chance,
I would, figuratively speaking, put his nose out of joint. There was a
matter of some sixty thousand dollars at stake. If I put it out of his
way, it was a blow the fellow would feel, and he really deserved no
quarter. I jumped into a hack and went about my business, and it was
in this hack--this immortal, historical hack--that the curious thing I
speak of occurred. It was a hack like any other, only a trifle dirtier,
with a greasy line along the top of the drab cushions, as if it had been
used for a great many Irish funerals. It is possible I took a nap; I
had been traveling all night, and though I was excited with my errand,
I felt the want of sleep. At all events I woke up suddenly, from a sleep
or from a kind of a reverie, with the most extraordinary feeling in the
world--a mortal disgust for the thing I was going to do. It came upon
me like THAT!" and he snapped his fingers--"as abruptly as an old wound
that begins to ache. I couldn't tell the meaning of it; I only felt that
I loathed the whole business and wanted to wash my hands of it. The idea
of losing that sixty thousand dollars, of letting it utterly slide and
scuttle and never hearing of it again, seemed the sweetest thing in the
world.
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