lace to tell him to prepare
for disturbances; but he was gone to see his wife, and I simply borrowed
a pistol.

"Now you need not be at all afraid nor shrink away from me like that.
I was bound upon stricter justice than any judge that sets forth on
circuit; and I meant to give, and did give, what no judge affords to the
guilty--the chance of leading a better life. I had brought my mother
to England, and she was in a poor place in London; her mind was failing
more and more, and reverting to her love-time, the one short happiness
of her life. 'If I could but see him, if I could but see him, and show
him his tall and clever son, he would forgive me all my sin in thinking
ever to be his wife. Oh, Thomas! I was too young to know it. If I could
but see him once, just once!'

"How all this drove me no tongue can tell. But I never let her know it;
I only said, 'Mother, he shall come and see you if he ever sees any body
more!' And she trusted me and was satisfied. She only said, 'Take my
picture, Thomas, to remind him of the happy time, and his pledge to me
inside of it.' And she gave me what she had kept for years in a bag of
chamois leather, the case of which I spoke before, which even in our
hardest times she would never send to the pawn-shop.

"The rest is simple enough. I swore by the God, or the Devil, who made
me, that this black-hearted man should yield either his arrogance or his
life. I followed him to the Moon valley, and fate ordained that I should
meet him where he forswore himself to my mother; on that very plank
where he had breathed his deadly lies he breathed his last. Would you
like to hear all about it?"

For answer I only bowed my head. His calm, methodical way of telling
his tale, like a common adventure with a dog, was more shocking than any
fury.

"Then it was this. I watched him from the Moonstock Inn to a house in
the village, where he dined with company; and I did not even know that
it was the house of his son, your father--so great a gulf is fixed
between the legitimate and the bastard! He had crossed the wooden bridge
in going, and was sure to cross it in coming back. How he could tread
those planks without contrition and horror--but never mind. I resolved
to bring him to a quiet parley there, and I waited in the valley.

"The night was soft, and dark in patches where the land or wood closed
in; and the stream was brown and threw no light, though the moon was on
the uplands. Time and place ali