aft of light afar, from under the canopy of clouds.

"Pull easy," he said, wondering what he would find there. He tried to
imagine Linda and her father, and discovered a strange reluctance within
himself. "Pull easy," he repeated.

* * * * * *

From the moment he fired at the thief of his honour, Giorgio Viola had
not stirred from the spot. He stood, his old gun grounded, his hand
grasping the barrel near the muzzle. After the lancha carrying off
Nostromo for ever from her had left the shore, Linda, coming up, stopped
before him. He did not seem to be aware of her presence, but when,
losing her forced calmness, she cried out--

"Do you know whom you have killed?" he answered--

"Ramirez the vagabond."

White, and staring insanely at her father, Linda laughed in his face.
After a time he joined her faintly in a deep-toned and distant echo of
her peals. Then she stopped, and the old man spoke as if startled--

"He cried out in son Gian' Battista's voice."

The gun fell from his opened hand, but the arm remained extended for a
moment as if still supported. Linda seized it roughly.

"You are too old to understand. Come into the house."

He let her lead him. On the threshold he stumbled heavily, nearly coming
to the ground together with his daughter. His excitement, his activity
of the last few days, had been like the flare of a dying lamp. He caught
at the back of his chair.

"In son Gian' Battista's voice," he repeated in a severe tone. "I heard
him--Ramirez--the miserable----"

Linda helped him into the chair, and, bending low, hissed into his ear--

"You have killed Gian' Battista."

The old man smiled under his thick moustache. Women had strange fancies.

"Where is the child?" he asked, surprised at the penetrating chilliness
of the air and the unwonted dimness of the lamp by which he used to sit
up half the night with the open Bible before him.

Linda hesitated a moment, then averted her eyes.

"She is asleep," she said. "We shall talk of her tomorrow."

She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with terror and with an
almost unbearable feeling of pity. She had observed the change that came
over him. He would never understand what he had done; and even to her
the whole thing remained incomprehensible. He said with difficulty--

"Give me the book."

Linda laid on the table the closed volume in its worn leather cover, the
Bible given him ages ago by an Englishman in Palermo.

"The child ha