“You were born in a perverse time, and are querulous, for the sake of the noise it makes,” rejoined his cool companion.  “I do not desire to restrain your hands from this young man, but take your time for it.  Let nothing be done to him while in this house.  I will run, if I can help it, no more risk for your passions; and I must confess myself anxious, if the devil will let me, of stopping right short in the old life and beginning a new one.  I have been bad enough, and done enough, to keep me at my prayers all the rest of my days, were I to live on to eternity.”

“This new spirit, I suppose, we owe to your visit to the last camp-meeting.  You will exhort, doubtless, yourself, before long, if you keep this track.  Why, what a prophet you will make among the crop-haired, Munro! what a brand from the burning!”

“Look you, Guy, your sarcasm pleases me quite as little as it did the young fellow, who paid it back so much better than I can.  Be wise, if you can, while you are wary; if your words continue to come from the same nest, they will beget something more than words, my good fellow.”

“True, and like enough, Munro; and why do you provoke me to say them?” replied Rivers, something more sedately.  “You see me in a passion—­you know that I have cause—­for is not this cause enough—­this vile scar on features, now hideous, that were once surely not unpleasing.”

As he spoke he dashed his fingers into the wound, which he still seemed pleased to refer to, though the reference evidently brought with it bitterness and mortification.  He proceeded—­his passion again rising predominant—­

“Shall I spare the wretch whose ministry defaced me—­shall I not have revenge on him who first wrote villain here—­who branded me as an accursed thing, and among things bright and beautiful gave me the badge, the blot, the heel-stamp, due the serpent?  Shall I not have my atonement—­my sacrifice—­and shall you deny me—­you, Walter Munro, who owe it to me in justice?”

“I owe it to you, Guy—­how?”

“You taught me first to be the villain you now find me.  You first took me to the haunts of your own accursed and hell-educated crew.  You taught me all their arts, their contrivances, their lawlessness, and crime.  You encouraged my own deformities of soul till they became monsters, and my own spirit such a monster that I no longer knew myself.  You thrust the weapon into my hand, and taught me its use.  You put me on the scent of blood, and bade me lap it.  I will not pretend that I was not ready and pliable enough to your hands.  There was, I feel, little difficulty in moulding me to your own measure.  I was an apt scholar, and soon ceased to be the subordinate villain.  I was your companion, and too valuable to you to be lost or left.  When I acquired new views of man, and began, in another sphere, that new life to which you would now turn your own eyes—­when I grew strong among men, and famous, and public opinion grow enamored with