meeting Runi. I did not see him again until the next morning,
when he informed me that he had found the spot where I had been
overtaken, that the dead man had been discovered by the others and
carried back towards Parahuari. He had followed the trace for some
distance, and he was satisfied that Runi had come thus far in the first
place only with the intention of spying on him.

My arrival, and the strange tidings I had brought, had thrown the
village into a great commotion; it was evident that from that time
Managa lived in constant apprehension of a sudden attack from his old
enemy. This gave me great satisfaction; it was my study to keep the
feeling alive, and, more than that, to drop continual hints of his
enemy's secret murderous purpose, until he was wrought up to a kind of
frenzy of mingled fear and rage. And being of a suspicious and somewhat
truculent temper, he one day all at once turned on me as the immediate
cause of his miserable state, suspecting perhaps that I only wished
to make an instrument of him. But I was strangely bold and careless of
danger then, and only mocked at his rage, telling him proudly that I
feared him not; that Runi, his mortal enemy and mine, feared not him but
me; that Runi knew perfectly well where I had taken refuge and would not
venture to make his meditated attack while I remained in his village,
but would wait for my departure. "Kill me, Managa," I cried, smiting my
chest as I stood facing him. "Kill me, and the result will be that he
will come upon you unawares and murder you all, as he has resolved to do
sooner or later."

After that speech he glared at me in silence, then flung down the spear
he had snatched up in his sudden rage and stalked out of the house and
into the wood; but before long he was back again, seated in his old
place, brooding on my words with a face black as night.

It is painful to recall that secret dark chapter of my life--that
period of moral insanity. But I wish not to be a hypocrite, conscious or
unconscious, to delude myself or another with this plea of insanity. My
mind was very clear just then; past and present were clear to me; the
future clearest of all: I could measure the extent of my action and
speculate on its future effect, and my sense of right or wrong--of
individual responsibility--was more vivid than at any other period of my
life. Can I even say that I was blinded by passion? Driven, perhaps, but
certainly not blinded. For no reaction,