l him myself, you understand; without any of the
law's delay or uncertainty, without troubling _bourreau_ or hangman.
Kill him as he had killed her--to do this was what I meant to live for.
There was war to the knife between him and me.

"I started, of course, under one heavy disadvantage. He knew me,
probably, whereas I didn't know him at all. When he found that his
amiable intention of fixing the crime on me had been frustrated, it
must, I imagined, have occurred to him that the said crime might
eventually be fixed by me on him. And he had proved himself to be a
person who didn't stick at trifles. It behooved me, therefore, to go to
work cautiously. But I hadn't fought Indians for nothing; and I _was_
very cautious. I waited quiet till I got a clue. It was a curious one;
and I got it in this way. It struck me one day, suddenly, that I had
heard of a murder precisely similar to this already. I could not at
first call the thing to mind; but presently I remembered--my dream. And
then I asked myself this: _Had not this murder been done before my eyes
three years ago?_

"I came to the conclusion that the circumstances of the murder in my
dream were absolutely identical with the circumstances of the actual
crime. Yes; the girl whose face in that dream I had never been able to
see was Lucille. Yes; the assassin whose face I had seen so plainly in
that dream was the real assassin. In short, I believe that the murder
had been _rehearsed_ before me three years previous to its actual
committal.

"Now this sounds rather wild. Yet I came to this conviction quite coolly
and deliberately. It _was_ a conviction. Assuming it to be true, the
odds against me grew shorter directly; _for I had the portrait of the
man I wanted drawn by myself the day after I had seen him in my dream_.
And the original of that portrait was a man not to be easily mistaken,
supposing him to exist at all. The day I came across that sketch of him
in that old forgotten sketch-book of mine, I was as sure he did exist as
that I was alive myself. What I had to do was to find this man, and then
I never doubted I should find the man I wanted. You see how the odds had
shortened. If he knew me I knew him now, and he had no notion that I did
know him. It was a good deal fairer fight between us.

"I fought it out alone. My story was hardly one the Rue de Jerusalem
would have acted upon; and, besides, I wanted no interference. So, with
the portrait before me, I sat do