light the pallid features with a derisive smile.

"The mercy you showed to others, the same shall be shown to you. Tiger
heart, you were merciless in the days gone by. Let your black, bad
heart break, as you have broken others!"

No voice had sounded, yet he was answered. Conscience had spoken in
trumpet-tones, and with a hollow groan the baronet turned away and
began pacing up and down.

It was a large and spacious apartment, this library of Kingsland Court,
dimly lighted now by the flickering wood-fire and the mellow glow of a
branch of wax-lights. Huge book-cases filled to overflowing lined the
four walls, and pictures precious as their weight in rubies looked
duskily down from their heavy frames. Busts and bronzes stood on
brackets and surmounted doors; a thick, rich carpet of moss-green,
sprinkled with oak leaves and acorns, muffled the tread; voluminous
draperies of dark green shrouded the tall, narrow windows. The massive
chairs and tables, fifty years old at least, were spindle-legged and
rich in carving, upholstered in green velvet and quaintly embroidered,
by hands moldered to dust long ago. Everything was old and grand, and
full of storied interest. And there, on the wall, was the crest of the
house--the uplifted hand grasping a dagger--and the motto, in old
Norman French, "Strike once, and strike well."

It is a very fine thing to be a baronet--a Kingsland of Kingsland, with
fifteen thousand a year, and the finest old house in the county; but if
Death will stalk grimly over your threshold and snatch away the life
you love more than your own, then even that glory is not omniscient.
For this wintery midnight, while Sir Jasper Kingsland walks moodily up