“The stranger smiled again, and remained immovable as a statue.

“ ‘I have wronged you,’ shrieked the old man, falling on his knees, and clasping his hands together. ‘Be revenged; take my all, my life; cast me into the water at your feet, and, if human nature can repress a struggle, I will die, without stirring hand or foot. Do it, Heyling, do it, but save my boy; he is so young, Heyling, so young to die!’

“ ‘Listen,’ said the stranger, grasping the old man fiercely by the wrist; ‘I will have life for life, and here is one . My child died, before his father’s eyes, a far more agonising and painful death than that young slanderer of his sister’s worth is meeting while I speak. You laughed⁠—laughed in your daughter’s face, where death had already set his hand⁠—at our sufferings, then. What think you of them now! See there, see there!’