pped in iniquities of no common kind. As he talked of
judgment to come for the unrepentant, some of his hearers groaned and
even wept; and when, changing his note, he dwelt upon the blessed future
state of those who earned forgiveness, their faces were lighted up with
joy.

But perhaps among all those gathered before him there were none more
deeply interested than Hokosa and one other, that woman to whom he
had sold the poison, and who, as it chanced, sat next to him. Hokosa,
watching her face as he was skilled to do, saw the thrusts of the
preacher go home, and grew sure that already in her jealous haste she
had found opportunity to sprinkle the medicine upon her rival's food.
She believed it to be but a charm indeed, yet knowing that in using
such charms she had done wickedly, she trembled beneath the words of
denunciation, and rising at length, crept from the chapel.

"Truly, her sin will find her out," thought Hokosa to himself, and
then in a strange half-impersonal fashion he turned his thoughts to
the consideration of his own case. Would _his_ sin find him out? he
wondered. Before he could answer that question, it was necessary first
to determine whether or no he had committed a sin. The man before
him--that gentle and yet impassioned man--bore in his vitals the seed
of death which he, Hokosa, had planted there. Was it wrong to have done
this? It depended by which standard the deed was judged. According to
his own code, the code on which he had been educated and which hitherto
he had followed with exactness, it was not wrong. That code taught
the necessity of self-aggrandisement, or at least and at all costs the
necessity of self-preservation. This white preacher stood in his path;
he had humiliated him, Hokosa, and in the end, either of himself or
through his influences, it was probable that he would destroy him.
Therefore he must strike before in his own person he received a mortal
blow, and having no other means at his command, he struck through
treachery and poison.

That was his law which for many generations had been followed and
respected by his class with the tacit assent of the nation. According to
this law, then, he had done no wrong. But now the victim by the altar,
who did not know that already he was bound upon the altar, preached a
new and a very different doctrine under which, were it to be believed,
he, Hokosa, was one of the worst of sinners. The matter, then, resolved
itself to this: which of