eful as ever they were in
olden times.... I hope I did not make a mistake in sparing young
Griscelli's life."

"Sparing his life! How?"

"He sought my life, and I had a perfect right to take his."

"That is not a very Christian sentiment, Mr. Fortescue."

"I did not say it was. Do you always repay good for evil and turn your
check to the smiter, Mr. Bacon?"

"If you put it in that way, I fear I don't."

"Do you know anybody who does?"

After a moment's reflection I was again compelled to answer in the
negative. I could not call to mind a single individual of my acquaintance
who acted on the principle of returning good for evil.

"Well, then, if I am no better than other people, I am no worse. Yet,
after all, I think I did well to let him go. Had I killed the brigand,
there would have been a coroner's inquest, and questions asked which might
have been troublesome to answer, and he has brothers and cousins. If I
could destroy the entire brood! Did you see the look he gave me as he went
away? It meant murder. We have not seen the last of Giuseppe Griscelli,
Mr. Bacon."

"I am afraid we have not. I never saw such an expression of intense hatred
in my life! Has he cause for it?"

"I dare say he thinks so. I killed his father and his grand-father."

This, uttered as indifferently as if it were a question of killing hares
and foxes, was more than I could stand. I am not strait-laced, but I draw
the line at murder.

"You did what?" I exclaimed, as, horror-struck and indignant, I stopped in
the path and looked him full in the face.

I thought I had never seen him so Mephistopheles-like. A sinister smile
parted his lips, showing his small white teeth gleaming under his gray
mustache, and he regarded me with a look of cynical amusement, in which
there was perhaps a slight touch of contempt.

"You are a young man, Mr. Bacon," he observed, gently, "and, like most
young men, and a great many old men, you make false deductions. Killing is
not always murder. If it were, we should consign our conquerors to
everlasting infamy, instead of crowning them with laurels and erecting
statues to their memory. I am no murderer, Mr. Bacon. At the same time I
do not cherish illusions. Unpremeditated murder is by no means the worst
of crimes. Taking a life is only anticipating the inevitable; and of all
murderers, Nature is the greatest and the cruellest. I have--if I could
only tell you--make you see what I have seen--Even now, O G