his obscurity, in safety, a god of death. With no special malice against anyone, perhaps-impersonal, just
shooting his arrows in the air, like Longfellow's archer, for the fun of it."
"And you wouldn't call such a person a homicidal maniac?" I asked, dryly.
"Not necessarily. Merely free of inhibitions against killing. He might have no consciousness of wrongdoing
whatever. Everybody comes into this world under sentence of death-time and method of execution
unknown. Well, this killer might consider himself as natural as death itself. No one who believes that
things on earth are run by an all-wise, all-powerful God thinks of Him as a homicidal maniac. Yet He
looses wars, pestilences, misery, disease, floods, earthquakes-on believers and unbelievers alike. If you
believe things are in the hands of what is vaguely termed Fate-would you call Fate a homicidal maniac?"
"Your hypothetical archer," I said, "looses a singularly unpleasant arrow, Braile. Also, the discussion is