is it any less obligatory upon the appointed
officers to obey the solemn behests?"

"Justice! Into what a frightful mockery have such as you degraded her
worship! No wonder justice fled to the stars. You are the appointed
officer of a harpy screaming for the blood of the innocent. How dare
you commit your crimes, raise your red hands, in the sacred name of
justice? Call yourself the priest of a frantic vengeance, for whom some
victim must be provided; and libel no more the attribute of Jehovah."

Scorn curled her lips, and beneath her glowing eyes, his grew restless,
as panoplied in conscious innocence she seemed to defy attack.

"You evidently credit me with motives of personal animosity, which
would alike disgrace my profession and my manhood. For your sake,
rather than my own, I should like to remove this erroneous impression
from your mind. If you could only understand--"

She threw up her hand, with an imperious gesture of disdain.

"Save your sophistries; they are wasted here. Why multiply cobwebs? I
understand you. If doves have a sixth sense that warns them before they
hear the hawk's cry, or discern the shadow of his circling wings, and
if mice, dumb in a cat's claws, surmise the exact value of the
preliminary caresses, the graceful antics, the fatal fondling of the
velvet paw, so we, the prey of legal 'Justice' know instinctively what
the swinging of censers, and the chanting of her high priest mean, when
he draws near us. I understand you. You intend to hang me if you can."

He drew his breath with a hissing sound, and a dark flush Stained his
broad smooth brow.

"On my honor as a gentleman, I came here to-day solely to--"

"Solely to assure yourself of some doubtful link you must weld into
your chain; solely to plunge the scalpel of some double-edged question.
If there must be an ante mortem examination, we will wait, if you
please, for the legal dissection when I am stretched before the
jury-box. Until then, you have no right to intrude upon the misery you
have brought on an innocent woman."

They stood so near each other, that he could count the fierce throbbing
of the artery in her round snowy throat, and see the shadow of her long
lashes; and again some electric current flashed from her feverishly
bright eyes, burning its way to the secret chambers of his selfish
heart, melting the dross that ambition and greed had slowly cemented,
and dropping one deathless spark into a deep adytum, of the exis