The tears were in his eyes now, and he felt that his heart would beat to death and break within him!
He saw that his enemy had struck at his weakest spot, and struck to kill.
He lifted his face toward the walls in a vague unseeing look and his eyes rested on a pair of crossed swords over a bookcase. They had been handed down to him from a long line of fighting ancestors. He arose, took them down mechanically, and drew one from its scabbard. How snugly its rough hilt fitted his nervous hand grip! He felt a curious throbbing in this hilt like a pulse, it was alive, and its spirit stirred deep waters in his soul that had never been ruffled before.
He recalled vaguely in memory things he knew had never happened to him and yet were part of his inmost life.
“Damn him!” he involuntarily hissed as he gripped the sword hilt with the instinctive power of the fighting animal that sleeps beneath the skin of all our culture and religion.
And then his eyes rested on a quaint little daguerreotype picture of his wife in her bridal dress, her sweet girlish face full of innocent pride and warm with his love. By its side he saw the portrait of their dead boy. How he recalled now every hour of that wonderful period preceding his birth—the unspeakable pride and tenderness with which he watched over his young wife! He recalled the morning of his birth, and the heart rending, piteous cries of young motherhood that tore his heart until the nails of his own fingers cut the flesh and drew the blood. How the minutes seemed long hours, and how at last he bent over her, softly kissed the drawn white lips, and gazed with tearful wonder and awe on the little red bundle resting on her breast! He recalled the tremor of weariness in her voice when she drew his head down close and whispered, “I didn’t mind the pain, John, though I couldn’t help the cries. He’s yours and mine—I am as proud as a queen. Now our souls are one in him—I am tired—I must sleep.”
Every movement of his past life seemed to stand out in this crisis with fiery clearness. He seemed to live in an instant whole years in every detail of that closeness of personal life that makes marriage a part of every stroke of the heart.
At last he set his lips firmly and said, “Yes, damn him, I will kill him as I would a snake!” He sat down and wrote his resignation as pastor of the church, left it on his desk, and strode hurriedly from the study leaving his door open. He purchased a revolver and a box of cartridges and walked straight to McLeod’s office.
The speaking was over, and McLeod was alone writing letters. He looked up with scant politeness as the Preacher entered and motioned him to a seat.
Instead of seating himself, he closed the door, and standing erect in front of it, said, “Allan McLeod, you are the author of an infamous slander reflecting on the honour of my wife!”