"It ought not to be. When a man indulges his ill-nature towards one
individual with entire impunity, he soon gains courage for extended
attacks, and others become sharers in the result of his vindictiveness.
It is a duty that a man owes the community to let all who maliciously
wrong him feel the consequences due to their acts."

"No doubt you are right; and, if I keep my present mind, I shall let my
particular friend Mr. Ayres feel that it is not always safe to stab
even in the dark."

The more Mr. Everton thought over the matter, the more fully satisfied
was he that Ayres had made the attack upon him. This person was engaged
as reporter and assistant editor of his newspaper, at a salary of ten
dollars a week. He had a family, consisting of a wife and four
children, the expense of whose maintenance rather exceeded than came
within his income, and small accumulations of debt were a natural
result.

Everton had felt some interest in this man, who possessed considerable
ability as a writer; he saw that he had a heavy weight upon him, and
often noticed that he looked anxious and dejected. On the very day
previous to the appearance of the article above referred to, he had
been thinking of him with more than usual interest, and had actually
meditated an increase of salary as a compensation for more extended
services. But that was out of the question now. The wanton and
injurious attack which had just appeared shut up all his bowels of
compassion, and so far from meditating the conferring of a benefit upon
Ayres, he rather inclined to a dismissal of the young man from his
establishment. The longer he dwelt upon it, the more inclined was he to
pursue this course, and, finally, he made up his mind to take some one
else in his place. One day, after some struggles with himself, he said,
"Mr. Ayres, if you can suit yourself in a place, I wish you would do so
in the course of the next week or two."

The young man looked surprised, and the blood instantly suffused his
face.

"Have I not given you satisfaction?" inquired Ayres.

"Yes--yes--I have no fault to find with you," replied Mr. Everton, with
some embarrassment in his air. "But I wish to bring in another person
who has some claims on me."

In this, Mr. Everton rather exceeded the truth. His equivocation was
not manly, and Ayres was deceived by it into the inference of a reason
for his dismissal foreign to the true one.

"Oh, very well," he replied, coldly. "If you