“He's quiet enough now in the old tower,” said the lawyer, stretching himself comfortably before the fire.
“I should have thought his tormentors were fitter occupants of his cell,” said Ralph.
“Perhaps so, young man; I express no opinion.”
“There was scarce a man among them whose face would not have hanged him,” continued Ralph.
“There again I offer no opinion,” said the lawyer, “but I'll tell you an old theory of mine. It is that a murderer and a hero are all but the same man.”
The company laughed. They were accustomed to these triumphs of logic, and relished them. Every man braced himself up in his seat.
“Why, how's that, lawyer?” said a townsman who sat tailor-fashion on a bench; he would hardly have been surprised if the lawyer had proved beyond question that he swam swanlike among the Isles of Greece.
“I'll tell you a story,” said the gentleman addressed. “There was an ancient family in Yorkshire, and the lord of the house was of a very splenetive temper. One day in a fit of jealousy he killed his wife, and put to death all of his children who were at home by throwing them over the battlements of his castle. He had one remaining child, and it was an infant, and was nursed at a farmhouse a mile away. He had set out for the farm with an intent to destroy his only remaining child, when a storm of thunder and lightning came on, and he stopped.”
“Thought it was a warning, I should say,” interrupted a listener.
“It awakened the compunctions of conscience, and he desisted from his purpose.”