sness. Suppose, tempted by his weaker nature and the appealing
eyes of Lucy, he were to yield to his better self and adopt a merciful
attitude, might not Ellen be restored to health and jeer at him to the
end of his days for his magnanimity? Hers was not the creed "If thine
enemy hunger." She would call him coward and accuse him of a feeble,
intimidated will. Were the case to be reversed, she would never curb her
hatred to prolong his existence; of that he was certain. He could see her
now bending over him, her thumb turned down with the majestic fearlessness
of a Caesar. She would term her act justice, and she would carry out the
sentence without a tremor.

But now that the same chance had come to him, and he saw the old woman
stretched before him, her thin white hair snowy against the wooden
flooring, a vague pity stirred in his heart. Death must come to us all
sometime; but how tragic to have its approach unheralded, granting not an
instant in which to raise a prayer to Heaven. No, he could not let his
worst foe go down to the grave thus. He was the captain of his own soul,
but not of Ellen Webster's.

He glanced up to find Lucy's gaze fixed upon him. There was horror and
anguish in her eyes, and he realized that she had read aright the
temptation that assailed him. She did not speak, she seemed scarcely to
breathe: but the pleading face told him that should he yield to his
darker passions and show no pity, she would forever loathe him for his
cruelty. Plainly as he saw this, however, it was not to her silent
entreaty that he surrendered. Something deeper than love was calling him.

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not
charity----" How persistently the sentences came to him! They seemed to
echo from out his memory--in his mother's voice--the voice of a vanished
past. She had taught him the words when he was a boy, and he had not
thought of them since. Why did they now surge into his mind to weaken his
resolve and cause him to waver in his intention? He wished he could get
away from Lucy's eyes and the sight of the woman upon the floor. Had his
mother lived, she might sometime have been as frail as this and had hair
as white. A sob broke from him, and he stooped over his fallen foe.

"Where do you want I should carry her?" he asked, raising the limp body in
his arms.

Lucy did not answer at once, and when she did her reply was unsteady.

"The room is at the head of the stairs," she s