as a man on the ship,
an Italian man, who was very wicked. He did very wicked things to the
writer. When he got to New York he kept on being wicked. He was so
wicked that the writer made up his mind to kill him. He waited for him
one night for two hours.

[Illustration: DECIPHERING THE DAGO'S LETTERS]

At last the moment came. It was very dark, and the victim came,
walking fast. The avenger sprang from a door-way and plunged his knife
into the back of the victim. The man fell, and the moment he fell the
writer of the letter knew that he was not the man he had intended to
kill. The wicked man would not have been killed so easily. He turned
over the man. He was dead. His eyes were used to the darkness, and he
could see that he was the wrong man.

The coat of the murdered man had fallen open, and a paper showed
itself in an inside pocket. The Italian waited only long enough to
snatch this paper. He wanted to have something which had belonged to
that poor, wrongly murdered man. After that he heard no more about the
great mistake he had committed. He could not read the newspapers, and
he asked nobody any questions. He put the paper away and kept it. He
often thought he ought to burn the paper, but he did not do it. He was
afraid. The paper had a name on it, and he was sure it was the name
of the man he had killed. He thought as long as he kept the paper
there was a chance for his forgiveness.

This was all four years ago. He worked hard, and after a while he
bought a bear. When his bear ate up the India-rubber on my bicycle he
was very much frightened, for he was afraid he might be sent to
prison. But that was not the fright that made him run away.

When he talked to the boy and asked him the name of the keeper of the
inn, and the boy told him what it was, the earth seemed to open and he
saw hell. The name was the name that was on the paper he had taken
from the man he had killed by mistake, and this was his wife whose
house he was staying at. He was seized with such a horror and such a
fear that everything might be found out, and that he would be
arrested, that he ran away to the railroad and took a train for New
York.

He did not want his bear. He did not want to be known as the man who
had been going about with a bear. One thing he wanted, and that was to
get back to Italy, where he would be safe. He was going back very soon
in a ship. He had changed his name. He could not be found any more.
But he knew his soul w