"I wish they would make a fight always," said Rulledge, with unexpected
feeling. "It would do more than anything to put an end to that
barbarity."

"It would be very interesting, as Wanhope says," Minver remarked. "But
aren't we getting rather far away? From the Ormonds, I mean."

"We are, rather," said Wanhope. "Though I agree that it would be
interesting. I should rather like to have it tried. You know Frederick
Douglass acted upon some such principle when his master attempted to whip
him. He fought, and he had a theory that if the slave had always fought
there would soon have been an end of whipping, and so an end of slavery.
But probably it will be a good while before criminals are--"

"Educated up to the idea," Minver proposed.

"Yes," Wanhope absently acquiesced. "There seems to be a resignation
intimated to the parting soul, whether in sickness or in health, by the
mere proximity of death. In Ormond's case there seems to have been
something more positive. His wife says that in the beginning of those
days he used to come to her and wonder what could be the matter with him.
He had a joy he could not account for by anything in their lives, and it
made her tremble."

"Probably it didn't. I don't think there was anything that could make
Mrs. Ormond tremble, unless it was the chance that Ormond would get the
last word," said Minver.

No one minded him, and Wanhope continued: "Of course she thought he