ss of malignity and revenge? It is the
only occupation in life for which your mutilation of me has left me
fit; and I accept it, as work worthy of my deformity. In the prospect of
watching how you bear this hunting through life, that never quite hunts
you down; how long you resist the poison-influence, as slow as it
is sure, of a crafty tongue that cannot be silenced, of a denouncing
presence that cannot be fled, of a damning secret torn from you and
exposed afresh each time you have hidden it--there is the promise of a
nameless delight which it sometimes fevers, sometimes chills my blood to
think of. Lying in this place at night, in those hours of darkness and
stillness when the surrounding atmosphere of human misery presses heavy
on me in my heavy sleep, prophecies of dread things to come between
us, trouble my spirit in dreams. At those times, I know, and shudder
in knowing, that there is something besides the motive of retaliation,
something less earthly and apparent than that, which urges me horribly
and supernaturally to link myself to you for life; which makes me feel
as the bearer of a curse that shall follow you; as the instrument of a
fatality pronounced against you long ere we met--a fatality beginning
before our fathers were parted by the hangman; perpetuating itself in
you and me; ending who shall say how, or when?

"Beware of comforting yourself with a false security, by despising my
words, as the wild words of a madman, dreaming of the perpetration of
impossible crimes. Throughout this letter I have warned you of what
you may expect; because I will not assail you at disadvantage, as you
assailed me; because it is my pleasure to ruin you, openly resisting
me at every step. I have given you fair play, as the huntsmen give fair
play at starting to the animal they are about to run down. Be warned
against seeking a false hope in the belief that my faculties are shaken,
and that my resolves are visionary--false, because such a hope is only
despair in disguise.

"I have done. The time is not far distant when my words will become
deeds. They cure fast in a public hospital: we shall meet soon!

"ROBERT MANNION."

"We shall meet soon!"

How? Where? I looked back at the last page of writing. But my attention
wandered strangely; I confused one paragraph with another; the longer I
read, the less I was able to grasp the meaning, not of sentences merely,
but even of the simplest