“Perhaps my desire to get rid of him, then, arose from a presentiment that we should have to do it in the end.  You know I have a gift of foreseeing and foretelling.”

“This won’t do for me, Guy; I know you too well to regard you as one likely to be influenced by notions of this nature—­you must put me on some other scent.”

“Why, so I would, Wat, if I were assured that I myself knew the precise impulse which sets me on this work.  But the fact is, my hate to the boy springs from certain influences which may not be defined by name—­which grow out of those moral mysteries of our nature, for which we can scarcely account to ourselves; and, by the operation of which, we are led to the performance of things seemingly without any adequate cause or necessity.  A few reflections might give you the full force of this.  Why do some men shrink from a cat?  There is an instance now in John Bremer; a fellow, you know, who would make no more ado about exchanging rifle-shots with his enemy at twenty paces, than at taking dinner; yet a black cat throws him into fits, from which for two days he never perfectly recovers.  Again—­there are some persons to whom the perfume of flowers brings sickness, and the song of a bird sadness.  How are we to account for all these things, unless we do so by a reference to the peculiar make of the man?  In this way you may understand why it is that I hate this boy, and would destroy him.  He is my black cat, and his presence for ever throws me into fits.”

“I have heard of the things of which you speak, and have known some of them myself; but I never could believe that the nature of the person had been the occasion.  I was always inclined to think that circumstances in childhood, of which the recollection is forgotten—­such as great and sudden fright to the infant, or a blow which affected the brain, were the operating influences.  All these things, however, only affect the fancies—­they beget fears and notions—­never deep and abiding hatred—­unquiet passion, and long-treasured malignity, such as I find in you on this occasion.”

“Upon this point, Munro, you may be correct.  I do not mean to say that hatred and a desire to destroy are consequent to antipathies such as you describe; but still, something may be said in favor of such a notion.  It appears to me but natural to seek the destruction of that which is odious or irksome to any of our senses.  Why do you crush the crawling spider with your heel?  You fear not its venom; inspect it, and the mechanism of its make, the architecture of its own fabrication, are, to the full, as wonderful as anything within your comprehension; but yet, without knowing why, with an impulse given you, as it would seem, from infancy, you seek its destruction with a persevering industry, which might lead one to suppose you had in view your direst enemy.”

“This is all very true; and from infancy up we do this thing, but the cause can not be in any loathsomeness which its presence occasions in the mind, for we perceive the same boy destroying with measured torture the gaudiest butterfly which his hat can encompass.”