ook violent
fright and fled."

Strickland looked still at the reader. Alexander had straightened
himself. He was speaking rather than reading. His voice had
intensities and shadows. His brows had drawn together, his eyes
glowed, and he stood with nostrils somewhat distended. The emotion
that he plainly showed seemed to gather about the injury done and the
appeal of Ibycus. The earlier Ibycus had not seemed greatly to
interest him. Strickland was used to stormy youth, to its passional
moments, sudden glows, burnings, sympathies, defiances, lurid shows of
effects with the causes largely unapparent. It was his trade to know
youth, and he had a psychologist's interest. He said now to himself,
"There is something in his character that connects itself with, that
responds to, the idea of vengeance." There came into his memory the
laird's talk, the evening of Mr. Touris's visit, in June. Glenfernie,
who would have wrestled with Grierson of Lagg at the edge of the pit;
Glenfernie's mother and father, who might have had much the same
feeling; their forebears beyond them with like sensations toward the
Griersons of their day.... The long line of them--the long line of
mankind--injured and injurers....

"Travelers through the wood, whose voices the robbers heard,
found Ibycus the poet lying upon the ground, ravished of
life. It chanced that he had been known of them, known and
loved. Great mourning arose, and vain search for them who
had done this wrong. But those strong, wicked ones were
gone, fled from their haunts, fled from the wood afar to
Corinth, for the god Pan had thrown against them a pine
cone. So the travelers took the body of Ibycus and bore it
with them to Corinth.

"A poet had been slain upon the threshold of the house of
song. Sacred blood had spattered the white robes of a queen
dressed for jubilee. Evil unreturned to its doers must
darken the sunshine of the famous days. Corinth uttered a
cry of lamentation and wrath. 'Where are the ill-doers, the
spillers of blood, that we may spill their blood and avenge
Ibycus, showing the gods that we are their helpers?' But
those robbers and murderers might not be found. And the body
of Ibycus was consumed upon a funeral pyre.

"The festival hours went by in Corinth. And now began to
fill the amphitheater where might find room a host for
number like the acorns