the end of the year,
and to pass an unruffled life in the snugness of the _delicatessen_ shop
which she conducted with such skill; but now alas, she had announced her
engagement to another, and his dream of bliss among the chitterlings and
liver-sausages was shattered. Herr Gott! what was he to do? Liosha
counselled immediate return to Neuchatel and assassination of his rival.
To kill another man for her was the surest way to a woman's heart. The
waiter approved the scheme, but lacked the courage--also the money to go
to Neuchatel. Liosha, espousing his cause warmly, gave him the latter at
once. The former she set to work to instil into him. She waylaid him at
odd corners in odd moments, much to the scandal of the guests, and
sought to inspire him with the true Balkan spirit. She even supplied him
with an Albanian knife, dangerously sharp. At last, the poor craven,
finding himself unwillingly driven into crime, sought from the mistress
of the boarding-house protection against his champion. Mrs. Considine,
called into consultation, was informed that Mrs. Prescott must either
cease from instigating the waiters to commit murder or find other
quarters. Liosha curled a contemptuous lip.

"If you think I'm going to have anything more to do with the little
skunk, you're mistaken."

And that evening when Josef, serving coffee in the drawing-room,
approached her with the tray, she waved him off.

"See here," she said calmly, "just you keep out of my way or I might
tread on you."

Whereupon the terrified Josef, amid the tittering hush of the genteel
assembly, bolted from the room, and then solved the whole difficulty by
bolting from the house, never to return.

When taken to task by Barbara over the ethics of this matter, Liosha
shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

"I guess," she said, "if a man loves a woman strongly enough to cry for
her, he ought to know what to do with the guy that butted in, without
being told."

"But you don't seem to understand what a terrible thing it is to take
the life of a human being," said Barbara.

"I can understand how you feel," Liosha admitted. "But I don't feel
about it the same as you. I've been brought up different."

"You see, my dear Barbara," I interposed judicially, "her father made
his living by slaughter before she was born. When he finished with the
pigs he took on humans who displeased him."

"And they were worse than the pigs," said Liosha.

Barbara sighed, for Liosha re