“You were very wicked once, weren’t you?” I said, seeking by emphasis on the “once” to mitigate what I felt might be the disagreeable nature of the question.

To my intense surprise, a gleam of shameful glory lit up his wizened face, and a sound which I tried to think a sigh, but which sounded like a chuckle, escaped his lips.

“Ay,” he replied; “I’ve been a bit of a spanker in my time.”

The term “spanker” in such connection puzzled me.  I had been hitherto led to regard a spanker as an eminently conscientious person, especially where the shortcomings of other people were concerned; a person who laboured for the good of others.  That the word could also be employed to designate a sinful party was a revelation to me.

“But you are good now, aren’t you?” I continued, dismissing further reflection upon the etymology of “spanker” to a more fitting occasion.

“Ay, ay,” he answered, his countenance resuming its customary aspect of resigned melancholy.  “I be a brand plucked from the burning, I be.  There beant much wrong wi’ Deacon Sawyers, now.”

“And it was your wife that made you good, wasn’t it?” I persisted, determined, now that I had started this investigation, to obtain confirmation at first hand on all points.

At the mention of his wife his features became suddenly transformed.  Glancing hurriedly round, to make sure, apparently, that no one but myself was within hearing, he leaned across and hissed these words into my ear—­I have never forgotten them, there was a ring of such evident sincerity about them—­

“I’d like to skin her, I’d like to skin her alive.”

It struck me, even in the light of my then limited judgment, as an unregenerate wish; and thus early my faith in the possibility of man’s reformation received the first of those many blows that have resulted in shattering it.

Nature, whether human or otherwise, was not made to be reformed.  You can develop, you can check, but you cannot alter it.

You can take a small tiger and train it to sit on a hearthrug, and to lap milk, and so long as you provide it with hearthrugs to lie on and sufficient milk to drink, it will purr and behave like an affectionate domestic pet.  But it is a tiger, with all a tiger’s instincts, and its progeny to the end of all time will be tigers.

In the same way, you can take an ape and develop it through a few thousand generations until it loses its tail and becomes an altogether superior ape.  You can go on developing it through still a few more thousands of generations until it gathers to itself out of the waste vapours of eternity an intellect and a soul, by the aid of which it is enabled to keep the original apish nature more or less under control.

But the ape is still there, and always will be, and every now and again, when Constable Civilisation turns his back for a moment, as during “Spanish Furies,” or “September massacres,” or Western mob rule, it creeps out and bites and tears at quivering flesh, or plunges its hairy arms elbow deep in blood, or dances round a burning nigger.