locks said,

"After all, you are luckiest to be alone in the world. To have ties
of affection is only to be the more unhappy."

"That's true," said Jason.

"Say you love somebody, and all your heart is full of her? You lose
her, and then where are you?"

"But that's not your own case," said Jason. "Your wife is alive, is
she not?"

"Yes."

"Then you have not lost her?"

"There is a worse loss than that of death," said Sunlocks.

Jason glanced quickly into his face, and said tenderly, "I know--I
understand. There was another man?"

"Yes."

"And he robbed you of her love?" said Jason, eagerly.

"Yes."

"And you killed him?" cried Jason, with panting breath.

"No. But God keep that man out of my hands."

"Where is he now?"

"Heaven knows. He was here, but he is gone; for when the Republic
fell I was imprisoned, and two days before that he was liberated."

"Silence!" shouted the warders, awakening suddenly and hearing
voices.

Jason's eyes had begun to fill, and down his rugged cheeks the big
drops were rolling one by one. After that he checked the impulse to
speak of the nurse. The wife of his yoke-fellow must be an evil
woman. The prisoner-priest must have been taken in by her. For once
the warders must have been right.

And late that night, while Jason was dressing the wounded hand of
Michael Sunlocks with wool torn from his own sheepskin jerkin, he
said, with his eyes down,

"I scarce thought there was anything in common between us two. You're
a gentleman, and I'm only a rough fellow. You have been brought up
tenderly, and I have been kicked about the world since I was a lad in
my poor mother's home, God rest her! But my life has been like yours
in one thing."

"What's that?" said Michael Sunlocks.

"That another man has wrecked it," said Jason. "I never had but one
glint of sunshine in my life, and that man wiped it out forever. It
was a woman, and she was all the world to me. But she was proud and I
was poor. And he was rich, and he came between us. He had everything,
and the world was at his feet. I had nothing but that woman's love,
and he took it from me. It was too cruel, and I could not bear
it--God knows I could not."

"Wait," cried Michael Sunlocks. "Is that why you are here! Did
you----you did not----no----"

"No, I know what you mean; but I did not kill him. No, no, I have
never seen him. I could never meet with him, try how I would."

"Where is he now?"

"With her--in hap