be some risk! If it
be with you, Munro, to have neither love nor hate, but what you do, to
do only for the profit and spoil that come of it, it is not so with me.
I can both love and hate; though it be, as it has been, that I entertain
the one feeling in vain, and am restrained from the enjoyment of the
other."

"You were born in a perverse time, and are querulous, for the sake of
the noise it makes," rejoined his cool companion. "I do not desire to
restrain your hands from this young man, but take your time for it. Let
nothing be done to him while in this house. I will run, if I can help
it, no more risk for your passions; and I must confess myself anxious,
if the devil will let me, of stopping right short in the old life and
beginning a new one. I have been bad enough, and done enough, to keep me
at my prayers all the rest of my days, were I to live on to eternity."

"This new spirit, I suppose, we owe to your visit to the last
camp-meeting. You will exhort, doubtless, yourself, before long, if you
keep this track. Why, what a prophet you will make among the
crop-haired, Munro! what a brand from the burning!"

"Look you, Guy, your sarcasm pleases me quite as little as it did the
young fellow, who paid it back so much better than I can. Be wise, if
you can, while you are wary; if your words continue to come from the
same nest, they will beget something more than words, my good fellow."

"True, and like enough, Munro; and why do you provoke me to say them?"
replied Rivers, something more sedately. "You see me in a passion--you
know that I have cause--for is not this cause enough--this vile scar on
features, now hideous, that were once surely not unpleasing."

As he spoke he dashed his fingers into the wound, which he still seemed
pleased to refer to, though the reference evidently brought with it
bitterness and mortification. He proceeded--his passion again rising
predominant--

"Shall I spare the wretch whose ministry defaced me--shall I not have
revenge on him who first wrote villain here--who branded me as an
accursed thing, and among things bright and beautiful gave me the badge,
the blot, the heel-stamp, due the serpent? Shall I not have my
atonement--my sacrifice--and shall you deny me--you, Walter Munro, who
owe it to me in justice?"

"I owe it to you, Guy--how?"

"You taught me first to be the villain you now find me. You first took
me to the haunts of your own accursed and hell-educated crew. You taug