wo days the efforts of the
wife, and the efforts of the clergyman who had celebrated the marriage,
were successful in keeping Ingleby and myself apart. On the third day
I set my trap more successfully, and I and the man who had mortally
injured me met together alone, face to face.

"Remember how my confidence had been abused; remember how the one good
purpose of my life had been thwarted; remember the violent passions
rooted deep in my nature, and never yet controlled--and then imagine for
yourself what passed between us. All I need tell here is the end. He was
a taller and a stronger man than I, and he took his brute's advantage
with a brute's ferocity. He struck me.

"Think of the injuries I had received at that man's hands, and then
think of his setting his mark on my face by a blow!

"I went to an English officer who had been my fellow-passenger on the
voyage from Barbadoes. I told him the truth, and he agreed with me that
a meeting was inevitable. Dueling had its received formalities and its
established laws in those days; and he began to speak of them. I stopped
him. 'I will take a pistol in my right hand,' I said, 'and he shall take
a pistol in his: I will take one end of a handkerchief in my left hand,
and he shall take the other end in his; and across that handkerchief the
duel shall be fought.' The officer got up, and looked at me as if I had
personally insulted him. 'You are asking me to be present at a murder
and a suicide,' he said; 'I decline to serve you.' He left the room. As
soon as he was gone I wrote down the words I had said to the officer and
sent them by a messenger to Ingleby. While I was waiting for an answer,
I sat down before the glass, and looked at his mark on my face. 'Many a
man has had blood on his hands and blood on his conscience,' I thought,
'for less than this.'

"The messenger came back with Ingleby's answer. It appointed a meeting
for three o'clock the next day, at a lonely place in the interior of the
island. I had resolved what to do if he refused; his letter released
me from the horror of my own resolution. I felt grateful to him--yes,
absolutely grateful to him--for writing it.

"The next day I went to the place. He was not there. I waited two hours,
and he never came. At last the truth dawned on me. 'Once a coward,
always a coward,' I thought. I went back to Mr. Blanchard's house.
Before I got there, a sudden misgiving seized me, and I turned aside
to the harbor. I was righ