who never offended me, never did me any harm.
Oh! how they feared death! how sad they were as they waited for me! how
they looked and looked to see whether a white flag would not be hoisted
after all! Oh! how they begged and prayed, how they kissed my hands in
order that I might wait a moment, but one moment more--life was so sweet
to them, yes, so sweet! And yet I had to kill them. I murdered
them--because the law commanded it."

A deep and bitter sob choked the old man's voice.

"Who will answer for me when God asks in a voice of thunder: 'Who has
dared to deal out death--the prerogative of God alone?' Who will answer
for me, who will defend me, when my judges will be so many pale, cold
shapes, me in whose hands were Death and Terror? And if we meet together
above there--or, perchance, down below, we, the executioner and the
executed, and sit down at one table! oh! those bloody souls!--moving
about headless, perchance, even in the other world, oh! horrible,
horrible! To have to answer for the head of a man! And what if he were
innocent besides, what if the judge erred, and the blood of the
condemned cries out to Heaven for vengeance? Alas! oh, Mighty Heavenly
Father!"

The grey-headed giant writhed on the ground convulsively, and smote his
bosom with his clenched fists. One could now catch a glimpse of his
face. It was a hard, weather-beaten countenance, bronzed by the suns of
many a year, large patches of his beard were grizzled, but his eyebrows
were of a deep black. He was quite beside himself, every muscle writhed
and quivered.

The little girl knelt down beside him and tenderly stroked his
sweat-covered forehead, took his head into her lap, and did not seem to
fear him terrible as he looked--like one of the damned on the verge of
the grave.

The old man kissed the girl's hands and feet, and timidly, tenderly
embracing her with his large, muscular, tremulous arms, bent over her,
hid his face in her lap, and sobbing and groaning, spoke in a voice near
to choking--it was as though his very soul was bursting away from his
bosom along with these terrible words.

"Look, my little girl!--once the judges condemned a young man to
death--my God! there was no trace of a beard upon his face, so young was
he. For three days he was placed in the pillory, and everybody wept who
beheld him--the youth was accused of having murdered his father. He
could not deny that he slept in the same room, and a bloody knife was
conce