knowledge! self-knowledge! From Heaven, indeed, descends the precept,
"KNOW THYSELF." That truth was told to us by the old heathen oracle.
But what old heathen oracle has told us how to know?




CHAPTER IV.

THE MAN-EATER HUMILIATED. HE ENCOUNTERS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN A
TRAVELLER, WHO, LIKE SHAKESPEARE'S JAQUES, IS "A MELANCHOLY FELLOW";
WHO ALSO, LIKE JAQUES, HATH "GREAT REASON TO BE BAD"; AND WHO, STILL
LIKE JAQUES, IS "FULL OF MATTER."

Jasper Losely rode slowly on through the clear frosty night; not back to
the country town which he had left on his hateful errand, nor into the
broad road to London. With a strange desire to avoid the haunts of men,
he selected--at each choice of way in the many paths branching right and
left, between waste and woodland--the lane that seemed the narrowest and
the dimmest. It was not remorse that gnawed him, neither was it mere
mercenary disappointment, nor even the pang of baffled vengeance--it was
the profound humiliation of diseased self-love--the conviction that, with
all his brute power, he had been powerless in the very time and scene in
which he had pictured to himself so complete a triumph. Even the quiet
with which he had escaped was a mortifying recollection. Capture itself
would have been preferable, if capture had been preceded by brawl and
strife--the exhibition of his hardihood and prowess. Gloomily bending
over his horse's neck, he cursed himself as fool and coward. What would
he have had!--a new crime on his soul? Perhaps he would have answered,
"Anything rather than this humiliating failure." He did not rack his