, sentenced to the gibbet, shudderingly looks back to the moment
"that trembled between two worlds,"--the world of the man guiltless,
the world of the man guilty,--he says to the holy, highly educated,
rational, passionless priest who confesses him and calls him "brother,"
"The devil put it into my head."

At that moment the door opened; at its threshold there stood the man's
mother--whom he had never allowed to influence his conduct, though he
loved her well in his rough way--and the hated fellow-man whom he longed
to see dead at his feet. The door reclosed: the mother was gone, without
a word, for her tears choked her; the fellow-man was alone with him. Tom
Bowles looked up, recognized his visitor, cleared his brow, and rubbed
his mighty hands.

CHAPTER XIX.

KENELM CHILLINGLY drew a chair close to his antagonist's, and silently
laid a hand on his.

Tom Bowles took up the hand in both his own, turned it curiously towards
the moonlight, gazed at it, poised it, then with a sound between groan
and laugh tossed it away as a thing hostile but trivial, rose and locked
the door, came back to his seat and said bluffly,--

"What do you want with me now?"

"I want to ask you a favour."

"Favour?"

"The greatest which man can ask from man,--friendship. You see, my dear
Tom," continued Kenelm, making himself quite at home, throwing his arm
over the back of Tom's chair, and stretching his legs comfortably as
one does by one's own fireside; "you see, my dear Tom, that men like
us--young, single, not on the whole bad-looking as men go--can
find sweethearts in plenty. If one does not like us, another will;
sweethearts are sown everywhere like nettles and thistles. But the
rarest thing in life is a friend. Now, tell me frankly, in the course
of your wanderings did you ever come into a village where you could not
have got a sweetheart if you had asked for one; and if, having got
a sweetheart, you had lost her, do you think you would have had any
difficulty in finding another? But have you such a thing in the world,
beyond the pale of your own family, as a true friend,--a man friend; and
supposing that you had such a friend,--a friend who would stand by you
through thick and thin; who would tell you your faults to your face, and
praise you for your good qualities behind your back; who would do all
he could to save you from a danger, and all he could to get you out of
one,--supposing you had such a friend and lost him, do y