my part,
I like Lynch law better than lax justice," said the doctor, angrily.

"Lynch law has its good and its bad side," said Quackinboss, "and,
mayhap, if you come to consider the thing coolly, you 'll see that if
I was rejecting rigid legality here, it was but to take the benefit of
Judge Lynch, only this time for mercy, and not for punishment."

"Ah, there is something in that!" cried the doctor. "You have made a
stronger case for yourself than I looked for; still, I owed that fellow
a vengeance!"

"It's the only debt a man is dishonored in the payin', sir. You know far
more of life than I do, but did you ever meet the man yet that was sorry
for having forgiven an injury? I'm not sayin' that he mightn't have felt
disappointed or discouraged by the result,--his enemy, as he'd call him,
mightn't have turned out what he ought; but that ain't the question: did
you _ever_ see one man who could say, after the lapse of years, 'I wish
I had borne more malice,--I'm sorry I was n't more cruel'?"

"Let them go, and let us forget them," said the old man, as he turned
and left the room.

Young Layton grasped the Colonel's hand, and shook it warmly, as he
said, "This victory is all your own."

CHAPTER IX. WORDS OF GOOD CHEER

When the key-note of some long-sought mystery has sounded, there is a
strange fascination in going over and over the theme, now wondering
why we had not been more struck by this or that fact, how we could have
overlooked the importance of this incident or that coincidence. Trivial
events come up to memory as missing links in the chain of proof, and
small circumstances and chance words are brought up to fill the measure
of complete conviction.

It was thus that this party of four sat almost till daybreak talking
over the past Each had some era to speak of as especially his own.
Winthrop could tell of Godfrey Hawke when he came a young man to the
States, and married his niece, the belle and the heiress of her native
city. He remembered all the praises bestowed upon the young Englishman's
manners and accomplishments, together with the graver forebodings
of others, who had remarked his inordinate love of play and his
indifference as to the company in which he indulged it Next came the
doctor, with his recollections of the man broken down by dissipation and
excess, and at last dying of poison. There was but little, indeed, to
recall the handsome Godfrey Hawke in the attenuated figure and distorted