“There you see! You’ve studied Christian charity so long that you will not say Kill him! and your manhood will not let you say Forgive him! and you can find no middle way.
“But I, thank God, am not so hampered; and as I finished reading that letter my fist clenched on old Gideon’s hilt, and I promised him that he should carry conviction to that false, proud heart. I would have gone at once, but I saw that my little maid was grievously ill, and I could not leave her; then I saw that she would die, and one day I drew Gideon from his scabbard and thrust his sharp tooth through that cartel,—see, here are the marks of him,—and I bade him hold fast till we could wet that paper in the red ink of my reply”— But here the governor interrupted him,—
“Myles! Man has no right to predetermine vengeance. In the heat of affront I too might have longed to combat to the death with one who had so lightlied my child, but I never could have stored up death for him like that.”
“You were bred to the land and to books, Bradford, and I to arms,” replied the soldier haughtily; and then in sudden revulsion of feeling, he grasped his friend’s hand, saying hoarsely, “I never can be the man you are, Will, and you better deserved than I to have had that saint for a daughter. But come, now, I must e’en tell you the whole, as if ’twere to a father confessor, and, by my faith, I wish you were one, for the old practice rises up in a man’s mind when trouble comes. But there! I won’t rake up old disputes, but rather on with my shrift: I was fully purposed, then, so soon as my sweet maid was gone, to travel to England and seeking out Ralph Standish challenge him to mortal combat, and to thrust my brave old sword with that letter spitted upon its blade through his false heart and so avenge my girl. I was as fully purposed that way as ever I was to eat when I was hungry and saw victual before me, and I’m not more apt to change my purpose than a mastiff is to lose his grip.
“The night she died I went down by the edge of the water and tramped along the beach the night through, yearning to throw myself in and get to him. I was half mad, I think, and could I have reached that black heart then, I fear I should have shamed my manhood by not leaving the villain time to defend himself. The next night, that is, last night, I was calmer, for as I had not slept nor eaten, I was not so full of lustyhood, and sending the others away, I sat by my darling the night through, alone, save when the poor wife came and I would not let her stay. Poor Barbara! I’ve not remembered her grief as I should; but mine swallowed up all else, because it was so much bigger and stronger than all else. So sitting by her, and reading that gentle, subtle smile that mayhap you marked upon her pretty mouth— How can I tell you, Will? Didst ever grasp a handful of sea sand and try to hold it fast?”
“Ay, and felt it slip, grain by grain, between my fingers.”
“Yes. You catch my meaning, as I knew you would. Even like those grains of sand, my fierce desire for that man’s life slipped and slipped away, and what I had deemed a noble vengeance grew to seem only a brutal thirst for blood, and the thought of him and of his offense seemed to fade into the forgotten years whose record is closed. Perhaps I slept, perhaps I dreamed without sleeping, but all at once it seemed to me that my maid stood beside me, close, and yet so far away I dared not put out a hand to touch her; and that smile was on her lips, and someway it seemed to speak its meaning without words, and the meaning was, ‘To him that overcometh’— That was all, and yet, something,—that dear spirit or mine own heart, or my memory of that Book she ever made me read to her all through the last year,—something told me that it was to him that overcometh his own self, to him who can trust his vengeance to the Lord and forego it for himself,—to such an one that the path lies open to the place where Lora has gone; but to the man of bloodshed and heady violence that path is no more to be traced than a highway through this wilderness.
“But when the daylight came, and I had eaten and slept, I began to think ’t was all a fantasy bred of long watching and fasting, and that my first thought was the best, and even I fancied that I was growing old and my hardihood was on the wane, and the cold apathy of age was what held my hand; and so, tossed this way and that, and sore bestead with doubt and anguish, I turned to some other for calmer counsel and a juster view. In the old days I would have sought a priest, but now I turn to you, Will; give me your counsel,—tell me where is my right.”
Throwing himself upon the ground, the soldier hid his face upon the fresh green mound and lay exhausted and passive. His friend stood many moments motionless, his eyes uplifted to the sky, where the little white clouds flying across the face of the waning moon gave her a look of hurry and perturbation, as if she too were sore beset by the doubts and temptations of the earthly atmosphere. At last he slowly spoke:—
“Old friend, I am no better or wiser man than you, and I can only speak as a fallible sinner may to one for whose welfare he yearns as for his own. It seems to me that God has already answered you through that dear child who has gone to Him. ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ saith He, and the promise to him that overcometh is as precious and as many-sided as’ the white stone that he shall receive, and which commentators hold to mean the diamond”—