ith? You are a fool. Every mouthful of food you have
been eating while you have been here has kept you weak. Now you are no
match for me. And I am going to kill you! Shall I tell you where you
are? You are at Trevose, the house that was Naomi's. Shall I tell you
something else?" and he laughed mockingly. "Naomi Penryn loved you--but
she's dead; and now Trevose House and lands belong to the Tresidders, do
you see?"

Then, I know not how, but a great strength came to me, an unnatural
strength. My heart grew cold, but my hands and arms felt like steel. His
bitter, mocking words seemed to dry up all the milk of human kindness in
my nature. At that moment I ceased to be a man. I was simply an
instrument of vengeance. His words gave me a great joy on the one hand,
for I knew he would not have told me she loved me, did he not believe it
to be true, but this only intensified my feeling of utter despair caused
by those terrible words, "But she's dead." I felt sure, too, that she
had been persecuted; I knew instinctively of all that she had had to
contend with, how they brought argument after argument to persuade her
to marry Nick, and how, because she had refused, they had slowly but
surely killed her.

And Nick gloated over the fact that Trevose lands belonged to him as
though that were the result of good luck rather than as the outcome of
systematic cruelty and murder.

I was very calm I remember, but it was an unnatural calm. I looked
around me, and Eli was still struggling with the serving-man, and to my
delight he was slowly mastering him.

"Nick Tresidder," I said, "you and your brood robbed my father, you have
robbed me, robbed me of everything I hold dear. I am going to kill you
now with these hands."

He laughed scornfully, as though I had spoken vain words; but he knew
not that there is a passion which overcomes physical weakness.

"I know it is to be a duel to the death," he laughed, "for I could not
afford to allow you to leave here alive."

"God Almighty is tired of you," I said; "He has given me the power to
crush the life out of you," and all the time I spoke I felt as though my
sinews were like steel bands.

He leapt upon me as quickly as a flash of light, but it did not matter.
In a minute I caught him in what the wrestlers call the cross-hitch. I
put forth my strength, and his right arm cracked like a rotten stick,
but he did not cry out. Then I put my arm around him and slowly crushed
the breath out