hot but firm eagerness of an avenging giant. Pierre had done some sad
deeds in his time, and had tasted some sweet revenges, but nothing like
to this had ever entered his brain. In that village were men who--as
they thought--had cast him to a death fit only for a coward or a cur.
Well, here was the most exquisite retaliation. Though his hand should
not be in the thing, he could still be the cynical and approving
spectator.

But yet: had all those people hovering about those lights below done harm
to him? He thought there were a few--and they were women--who would not
have followed his tumbril to his death with cries of execration. The
rest would have done so,--most of them did so, not because he was a
criminal, but because he was a victim, and because human nature as it is
thirsts inordinately at times for blood and sacrifice--a living strain of
the old barbaric instinct. He remembered that most of these people were
concerned in having injured The Man. The few good women there had vile
husbands; the few pardonable men had hateful wives: the village of Purple
Hill was an ill affair.

He thought: now doubtfully, now savagely, now with irony.

The hammer and steel clicked on.

He looked at the lights of the village again. Suddenly there came
to his mind the words of a great man who sought to save a city manifold
centuries ago. He was not sure that he wished to save this village; but
there was a grim, almost grotesque, fitness in the thing that he now
intended. He spoke out clearly through the night:

"'Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: