uite as high perfection as your own."

"And without doubt you have; but, know you not, Munro, that wherever the
passions are concerned, the senses become so much more acute; and,
indeed, are so many sentinels and spies--scouring about perpetually, and
with this advantage over all other sentinels, that they then never
slumber. So, whether one hate or love, the ear and the eye take heed of
all that is going on--they minister to the prevailing passion, and seem,
in their own exercise, to acquire some of the motive and impulse which
belong to it."

"I believe this in most respects to be the case. I have observed it on
more than one occasion myself, and in my own person. But, Guy, in all
that you have said, and all that I have seen, I do not yet understand
why it is that you entertain such a mortal antipathy to this young man,
more than to many others who have at times crossed your path. I now
understand the necessity for putting him out of the way; but this is
another matter. Before we thought it possible that he could injure us,
you had the same violent hatred, and would have destroyed him at the
first glance. There is more in this, Guy, than you have been willing to
let out; and I look upon it as strange, to say nothing more, that I
should be kept so much in the dark upon the subject."

Rivers smiled grimly at the inquiry, and replied at once, though with
evident insincerity,--

"Perhaps my desire to get rid of him, then, arose from a presentiment
that we should have to do it in the end. You know I have a gift of
foreseeing and foretelling."

"This won't do for me, Guy; I know you too well to regard you as one
likely to be influenced by notions of this nature--you must put me on
some other scent."

"Why, so I would, Wat, if I were assured that I myself knew the precise
impulse which sets me on this work. But the fact is, my hate to the boy
springs from certain influences which may not be defined by name--which
grow out of those moral mysteries of our nature, for which we can
scarcely account to ourselves; and, by the operation of which, we are
led to the performance of things seemingly without any adequate cause or
necessity. A few reflections might give you the full force of this. Why
do some men shrink from a cat? There is an instance now in John Bremer;
a fellow, you know, who would make no more ado about exchanging
rifle-shots with his enemy at twenty paces, than at taking dinner; yet a
black cat throws him int