herself. I told her to, if there was no other way;
an' she always minded me, Lucy did. My poor girl! Oh, it warn't right!
No, by God, it warn't!"

As the memory of this bitter wrong, this double bereavement, burned in
his sore heart, the devil that lurks in every strong man's blood leaped
up; he put his hand upon his brother's throat, and, watching the white
face before him, muttered low between his teeth,--

"I'm lettin' him go too easy; there's no pain in this; we a'n't even
yet. I wish he knew me. Marster Ned! it's Bob; where's Lucy?"

From the captain's lips there came a long faint sigh, and nothing but a
flutter of the eyelids showed that he still lived. A strange stillness
filled the room as the elder brother held the younger's life suspended
in his hand, while wavering between a dim hope and a deadly hate. In the
whirl of thoughts that went on in my brain, only one was clear enough to
act upon. I must prevent murder, if I could,--but how? What could I do
up there alone, locked in with a dying man and a lunatic?--for any mind
yielded utterly to any unrighteous impulse is mad while the impulse
rules it. Strength I had not, nor much courage, neither time nor wit for
stratagem, and chance only could bring me help before it was too late.
But one weapon I possessed,--a tongue,--often a woman's best defence;
and sympathy, stronger than fear, gave me power to use it. What I said
Heaven only knows, but surely Heaven helped me; words burned on my lips,
tears streamed from my eyes, and some good angel prompted me to use the
one name that had power to arrest my hearer's hand and touch his heart.
For at that moment I heartily believed that Lucy lived, and this earnest
faith rousted in him a like belief.

He listened with the lowering look of one in whom brute instinct was
sovereign for the time,--a look that makes the noblest countenance base.
He was but a man,--a poor, untaught, outcast, outraged man. Life had few
joys for him; the world offered him no honors, no success, no home, no
love. What future would this crime mar? and why should he deny himself
that sweet, yet bitter morsel called revenge? How many white men, with
all New England's freedom, culture, Christianity, would not have felt as
he felt then? Should I have reproached him for a human anguish, a human
longing for redress, all now left him from the ruin of his few poor
hopes? Who had taught him that self-control, self-sacrifice, are
attributes that make men m