The Bishop nodded. “I know—I know—it was awful. 'But vengeance is mine—I will repay'—saith the Lord.”
“Well, I was young, an' my father—you know how I loved him. Befo' I c'ud get home they had burned our house, killed my sick mother from exposure and insulted my sisters.”
“Jack,” said the old man hotly—“a home-made Yankee is a 'bomination to the Lord. He's a twin brother to the Copperhead up north.”
“My little brother—they might have spared him,” went on the outlaw—“they might have spared him. He tried to defen' his mother an' sisters an' they shot him down in col' blood.”
“'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord,” replied the old man sadly.
“Well, I acted as His agent that time,”—his eyes were hot with a bright glitter. “I put on their uniform an' went after 'em. I j'ined 'em—the devils! An' they had a nigger sarjent an' ten of their twenty-seven was niggers, wearin' a Yankee uniform. I j'ined 'em—yes,—for wasn't I the agent of the Lord?” He laughed bitterly. “An' didn't He say: 'He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.' One by one they come up missin', till I had killed all but seven. These got panicky—followed by an unknown doom an' they c'udn't see it, for it come like a thief at midnight an' agin like a pesterlence it wasted 'em at noonday. They separated—they tried to fly—they hid—but I followed 'em 'an I got all but one. He fled to California.”
“It was awful, Jack—awful—God he'p you.”
“Then a price was put on my head. I was Jack Bracken, the spy and the outlaw. I was not to be captured, but shot and hung. Then I cut down that Yankee an' you all turned agin me. I was hunted and hounded. I shot—they shot. I killed an' they tried to. I was shot down three times. I've got bullets in me now.
“After the war I tried to surrender. I wanted to quit and live a decent life. But no, they put a bigger price on my head. I came home like other soldiers an' went to tillin' my farm. They ran me away—they hunted an' hounded me. Civilization turned ag'in me. Society was my foe. I was up ag'in the fust law of Nature. It is the law of the survival—the wild beast that, cowered, fights for his life. Society turned on me—I turned on Society.”
“But there was one thing that happen'd that put the steel in me wuss than all. All through them times was one star I loved and hoped for. I was to marry her when the war closed. She an' her sister—the pretty one—they lived up yander on the mountain side. The pretty one died. But when I lost faith in Margaret Adams, I lost it in mankind. I'd ruther a seen her dead. It staggered me—killed the soul in me—to think that an angel like her could fall an' be false.”