ways done his murders with a bowie-knife, and he made all my hairs
rise by suddenly snatching it out and showing it to me.

At the end of this first seance I went home with six of his fearful
secrets among my freightage, and found them a great help to my dreams,
which had been sluggish for a while back. I sought him again and again,
on my Saturday holidays; in fact I spent the summer with him--all of
it which was valuable to me. His fascinations never diminished, for
he threw something fresh and stirring, in the way of horror, into each
successive murder. He always gave names, dates, places--everything. This
by and by enabled me to note two things: that he had killed his victims
in every quarter of the globe, and that these victims were always named
Lynch. The destruction of the Lynches went serenely on, Saturday after
Saturday, until the original thirty had multiplied to sixty--and more to
be heard from yet; then my curiosity got the better of my timidity, and
I asked how it happened that these justly punished persons all bore the
same name.

My hero said he had never divulged that dark secret to any living being;
but felt that he could trust me, and therefore he would lay bare before
me the story of his sad and blighted life. He had loved one 'too fair
for earth,' and she had reciprocated 'with all the sweet affection of
her pure and noble nature.' But he had a rival, a 'base hireling' named
Archibald Lynch, who said the girl should be his, or he would 'dye his
hands in her heart's best blood.' The carpenter, 'innocent and happy
in love's young dream,' gave no weight to the threat, but led his
'golden-haired darling to the altar,' and there, the two were made one;
there also, just as the minister's hands were stretched in blessing over
their heads, the fell deed was done--with a knife--and the bride fell
a corpse at her husband's feet. And what did the husband do? He plucked
forth that knife, and kneeling by the body of his lost one, swore to
'consecrate his life to the extermination of all the human scum that
bear the hated name of Lynch.'

That was it. He had been hunting down the Lynches and slaughtering
them, from that day to this--twenty years. He had always used that same
consecrated knife; with it he had murdered his long array of Lynches,
and with it he had left upon the forehead of each victim a peculiar
mark--a cross, deeply incised. Said he--

'The cross of the Mysterious Avenger is known in Europe, in A