c,
fascinating eyes--as the snake watches the bird--eyes from which Joseph
could not withdraw his own, and yet before which it seemed to him that
he quaked and shrivelled.

The candles were burning low in their sconces, and the corners of that
ample, gloomy hall were filled with mysterious shadows that formed a
setting well attuned to the grim picture made by those two figures--the
one towering stern and vengeful, the other crouching palsied and livid.

Beyond the table, and with the wounded Gregory--lying unconscious and
bleeding--at his feet, stood Kenneth looking on in silence, in wonder
and in some horror too.

To him also, as he watched, the seconds seemed minutes from the time
when Crispin had disarmed his opponent until with a laugh--short and
sudden as a stab--he dropped his sword and caught his victim by the
throat.

However fierce the passion that had actuated Crispin, it had been held
hitherto in strong subjection. But now at last it suddenly welled up and
mastered him, causing him to cast all restraint to the winds, to abandon
reason, and to give way to the lust of rage that rendered ungovernable
his mood.

Like a burst of flame from embers that have been smouldering was the
upleaping of his madness, transfiguring his face and transforming his
whole being. A new, unconquerable strength possessed him; his pulses
throbbed swiftly and madly with the quickened coursing of his blood, and
his soul was filled with the cruel elation that attends a lust about to
be indulged the elation of the beast about to rend its prey.

He was pervaded by the desire to wreak slowly and with his hands the
destruction of his broken enemy. To have passed his sword through him
would have been too swiftly done; the man would have died, and Crispin
would have known nothing of his sufferings. But to take him thus by
the throat; slowly to choke the life's breath out of him; to feel his
desperate, writhing struggles; to be conscious of every agonized twitch
of his sinews, to watch the purpling face, the swelling veins, the
protruding eyes filled with the dumb horror of his agony; to hold him
thus--each second becoming a distinct, appreciable division of time--and
thus to take what payment he could for all the blighted years that lay
behind him--this he felt would be something like revenge.

Meanwhile the shock of surprise at the unlooked-for movement had
awakened again the man in Joseph. For a second even Hope knocked at
his heart