n kinder to me than my own blood have
been. Who took me in when I was naked and clothed me, when I hadn't a
friend or a sixpence to my name. You remember--I came here from that
row in Colombia with my wound, and I was down with the fever when they
found me, and Alvarez gave me the appointment. And this is how I
reward them. If I stay I do more harm. If I go away I leave them
surrounded by enemies, and not enemies who fight fair, but damned
thieves and scoundrels, who stab at women and who fight in the dark. I
wouldn't have had it happen, old man, for my right arm! They--they have
been so kind to me, and I have been so happy here--and now!" The boy
bowed his face in his hands and sat breathing brokenly while Clay
turned his unlit cigar between his teeth and peered at him curiously
through the darkness. "Now I have made them both unhappy, and they
hate me, and I hate myself, and I have brought nothing but trouble to
every one. First I made my own people miserable, and now I make my
best friends miserable, and I had better be dead. I wish I were dead.
I wish I had never been born."

Clay laid his hand on the other's bowed shoulder and shook him gently.
"Don't talk like that," he said; "it does no good. Why do you hate
yourself?"

"What?" asked Stuart, wearily, without looking up. "What did you say?"

"You said you had made them hate you, and you added that you hated
yourself. Well, I can see why they naturally would be angry for the
time, at least. But why do you hate yourself? Have you reason to?"

"I don't understand," said Stuart.

"Well, I can't make it any plainer," Clay replied. "It isn't a
question I will ask. But you say you want my advice. Well, my advice
to my friend and to a man who is not my friend, differ. And in this
case it depends on whether what that thing--" Clay kicked the paper
which had fallen on the ground--"what that thing says is true."

The younger man looked at the paper below him and then back at Clay,
and sprang to his feet.

"Why, damn you," he cried, "what do you mean?"

He stood above Clay with both arms rigid at his side and his head bent
forward. The dawn had just broken, and the two men saw each other in
the ghastly gray light of the morning. "If any man," cried Stuart
thickly, "dares to say that that blackguardly lie is true I'll kill
him. You or any one else. Is that what you mean, damn you? If it is,
say so, and I'll break every bone of your body."

"Well