waters of the dock, when, being unable to swim, he perished by
drowning. 'And the like,' said the captain, when musing on his trivial
vengeance, 'and the like happens to many an honest sailor.' Yes,
thought I, the captain was right. The momentary shock of a pistol-
bullet--what is it? Perhaps it may save the wretch after all from the
pangs of some lingering disease; and then again I shall have the
character of a murderer, if known to have shot him; he will with many
people have no such character, but at worst the character of a man too
harsh (they will say), and possibly mistaken in protecting his
property. And then, if not known as the man who shot him, where is the
shadow even of vengeance? Strange it seemed to me, and passing strange,
that I should be the person to urge arguments in behalf of letting this
man escape. For at one time I had as certainly, as inexorably, doomed
him as ever I took any resolution in my life. But the fact is, and I
began to see it upon closer view, it is not easy by any means to take
an adequate vengeance for any injury beyond a very trivial standard;
and that with common magnanimity one does not care to avenge. Whilst I
was in this mood of mind, still debating with myself whether I should
or should not contaminate my hands with the blood of this monster, and
still unable to shut my eyes upon one fact, viz. that my buried Agnes
could above all things have urged me to abstain from such acts of
violence, too evidently useless, listlessly and scarcely knowing what I
was in quest of, I strayed by accident into a church where a venerable
old man was preaching at the very moment I entered; he was either
delivering as a text, or repeating in the course of his sermon, these
words--'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' By some
accident also he fixed his eyes upon me at the moment; and this
concurrence with the subject then occupying my thoughts so much
impressed me, that I determined very seriously to review my half-formed
purposes of revenge; and well it was that I did so: for in that same