ice. It is his
capability! It is the thing he likes to do.

Me, I am even with him. I am even with him against all time. Should it
be my fate to pass through his hands some day, should he stand to
perform his last dreadful offices for me, still am I even with him. I
would grin from under the slide itself and I would say to him--"M. de
Nou, I am even with you!" But I would not tell him how. I would turn
silent from those haunted yellow eyes, half-understanding and ravening
at me, and I would die content to leave him to his damnation. No, I
would not tell!... Only I am telling you, truly, so that perhaps this
tale may reach some of our friends who have escaped from New Caledonia
into the world again. They will remember, and they will rejoice to hear
how I evened the score on M. de Nou. Listen:

It was soon after my release from the Collective--when I was considered
to be properly chastened by residence in the cells--that I had the
ill-luck to meet this individual.

You can see for yourself I was never built for rude labor. But I have a
certain deftness of my fingers and perhaps also--well, a certain
polish--what?... Monsieur agrees? Too kind! Your servant, Monsieur....
Anyway, it was quite natural I should find employment with Maitre
Sergeo, he who keeps the barber shop in the Rue des Fleurs.

Maitre Sergeo is a worthy man, a libere, which means he was formerly a
life convict himself, you understand, though since restored to certain
rights within the colony limits. Requiring an assistant at his lathery
trade he applied to the penitentiary on Ile de Nou.

"Here is a brisk fellow," said the sub-commandant, leading me out like a
horse at a fair. "Number 7897. Docile and clever. Condemned for eight
years. Having served his Collective with a clear record. If you are ever
dull about your place he will sing you the latest operas. He has all the
polite accomplishments."

"A duke in trouble," suggested Maitre Sergeo, regarding me with his
sober twinkle. "What romance!... Perhaps he is the Red Mark himself!"

Strange he should have said that. Strange, too, that I should have heard
the term then and there for the first time in my life. Afterwards I
found it common enough, a kind of by-word among people who affect to
share the inner mysteries of police and crime. And later still I had
good reason to remember it.

Meanwhile the sub-commandant was encouraging no unofficial illusions on
my account.

"I said nothing about a du