yally allowed old friends to be traduced
in my hearing, and been too craven to utter a word in their defense. He
reminded me of many dishonest things which I had done; of many which I
had procured to be done by children and other irresponsible persons; of
some which I had planned, thought upon, and longed to do, and been
kept from the performance by fear of consequences only. With exquisite
cruelty he recalled to my mind, item by item, wrongs and unkindnesses I
had inflicted and humiliations I had put upon friends since dead, "who
died thinking of those injuries, maybe, and grieving over them," he
added, by way of poison to the stab.

"For instance," said he, "take the case of your younger brother, when
you two were boys together, many a long year ago. He always lovingly
trusted in you with a fidelity that your manifold treacheries were not
able to shake. He followed you about like a dog, content to suffer wrong
and abuse if he might only be with you; patient under these injuries
so long as it was your hand that inflicted them. The latest picture you
have of him in health and strength must be such a comfort to you! You
pledged your honor that if he would let you blindfold him no harm should
come to him; and then, giggling and choking over the rare fun of the
joke, you led him to a brook thinly glazed with ice, and pushed him
in; and how you did laugh! Man, you will never forget the gentle,
reproachful look he gave you as he struggled shivering out, if you live
a thousand years! Oh! you see it now, you see it now!"

"Beast, I have seen it a million times, and shall see it a million more!
and may you rot away piecemeal, and suffer till doomsday what I suffer
now, for bringing it back to me again!"

The dwarf chuckled contentedly, and went on with his accusing history
of my career. I dropped into a moody, vengeful state, and suffered in
silence under the merciless lash. At last this remark of his gave me a
sudden rouse:

"Two months ago, on a Tuesday, you woke up, away in the night, and fell
to thinking, with shame, about a peculiarly mean and pitiful act of
yours toward a poor ignorant Indian in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains
in the winter of eighteen hundred and--"

"Stop a moment, devil! Stop! Do you mean to tell me that even my very
thoughts are not hidden from you?"

"It seems to look like that. Didn't you think the thoughts I have just
mentioned?"

"If I didn't, I wish I may never breathe again! Look here,