. To assault and murder either of the two principal agents in
this tragedy, what would it be, what other effect could it have, than to
invest them with the character of injured and suffering people, and thus
to attract a pity or a forgiveness at least to their persons which never
otherwise could have illustrated their deaths? I remembered, indeed, the
words of a sea-captain who had taken such vengeance as had offered at
the moment upon his bitter enemy and persecutor (a young passenger on
board his ship), who had informed against him at the Custom-house on his
arrival in port, and had thus effected the confiscation of his ship, and
the ruin of the captain's family. The vengeance, and it was all that
circumstances allowed, consisted in coming behind the young man
clandestinely and pushing him into the deep waters of the dock, when,
being unable to swim, he perished by drowning. 'And the like,' said the
captain, when musing on his trivial vengeance, 'and the like happens to
many an honest sailor.' Yes, thought I, the captain was right. The
momentary shock of a pistol-bullet--what is it? Perhaps it may save the
wretch after all from the pangs of some lingering disease; and then
again I shall have the character of a murderer, if known to have shot
him; he will with many people have no such character, but at worst the
character of a man too harsh (they will say), and possibly mistaken in
protecting his property. And then, if not known as the man who shot him,
where is the shadow even of vengeance? Strange, it seemed to me, and
passing strange, that I should be the person to urge arguments in behalf
of letting this man escape. For at one time I had as certainly, as
inexorably, doomed him as ever I took any resolution in my life. But the
fact is, and I began to see it upon closer view, it is not easy by any
means to take an adequate vengeance for any injury beyond a very trivial
standard; and that with common magnanimity one does not care to avenge.
Whilst I was in this mood of mind, still debating with myself whether I
should or should not contaminate my hands with the blood of this
monster, and still unable to shut my eyes upon one fact, viz. that my
buried Agnes could above all things have urged me to abstain from such
acts of violence, too evidently useless, listlessly and scarcely knowing
what I was in quest of, I strayed by accident into a church where a
venerable old man was preaching at the very moment I entered; he was