worst creature on all that island
escaped--probably escaped by the aid of that very white skin that should
have ensured him a greater punishment than the rest. He escaped to
Hayti. Now you have probably heard something of Hayti, and of the common
state of affairs there?"

We both had heard, and, indeed, the matter had been particularly brought
to Hewitt's notice by the case which I have told elsewhere as "The
Affair of the Tortoise." As for me, I had read Sir Spenser St. John's
book on the black republic, and I had been greatly impressed by the
graphic picture it gives of the horrible, blood-stained travesty of
regular government there prevailing. Nothing in the worst of the South
American Republics is to be remotely compared to it. In the worst
periods there was not a crime imaginable that could not be, and was not,
committed openly and with impunity by anybody on the right side of the
so-called "government"; and the "government" was nothing but an
organised crime in itself.

"Well," Peytral pursued, "then I need not expatiate on it, and you will
understand the sort of place that Mayes fled to, and how it suited him.
He was a man of far greater ability than any of the coarse scoundrels in
power, and he was worse than all of them. He was not such a fool as to
aim at ostensible political power--that way generally led to
assassination. He was the jackal, the contriver, the power behind the
throne, the instigator of half the devilry set going in that unhappy
place, and he profited by it with little risk; he was the confidential
adviser of that horrible creature Domingue. If you know anything of
Hayti you will know what that means.

"At this time I was comparatively a young man, and a merchant at
Port-au-Prince. It was a bad place, of course, and business was risky
enough, but, for that very reason, profits were large, and that was an
attraction to a sanguine young man like myself. I did very well, and I
had thoughts of getting out of it with what I had made. But it was a
fatal thing to be supposed wealthy in Port-au-Prince, unless you were a
villain in power, or partner with one. I was neither, and I was judged a
suitable victim by Mayes. Not I alone, either--no, nor even only I and
my fortune. Gentlemen, gentlemen, my poor wife, who now lies----"

Peytral's utterance failed him. He rose as if choking, and Hewitt rose
to quiet him. "Never mind," he said, "sit quiet now. We understand. Rest
a moment."

The old man sa