From this time forward life took on a new complexion for her.  She said, “The future is secure—­I can wait, and enjoy the waiting.”  The most of her lost interests revived.  She took up music again, and languages, drawing, painting, and the other long-discarded delights of her maidenhood.  She was happy once more, and felt again the zest of life.  As the years drifted by she watched the development of her boy, and was contented with it.  Not altogether, but nearly that.  The soft side of his heart was larger than the other side of it.  It was his only defect, in her eyes.  But she considered that his love for her and worship of her made up for it.  He was a good hater—­that was well; but it was a question if the materials of his hatreds were of as tough and enduring a quality as those of his friendships—­and that was not so well.

The years drifted on.  Archy was become a handsome, shapely, athletic youth, courteous, dignified, companionable, pleasant in his ways, and looking perhaps a trifle older than he was, which was sixteen.  One evening his mother said she had something of grave importance to say to him, adding that he was old enough to hear it now, and old enough and possessed of character enough and stability enough to carry out a stern plan which she had been for years contriving and maturing.  Then she told him her bitter story, in all its naked atrociousness.  For a while the boy was paralyzed; then he said: 

“I understand.  We are Southerners; and by our custom and nature there is but one atonement.  I will search him out and kill him.”

“Kill him?  No!  Death is release, emancipation; death is a favor.  Do I owe him favors?  You must not hurt a hair of his head.”

The boy was lost in thought awhile; then he said: 

“You are all the world to me, and your desire is my law and my pleasure.  Tell me what to do and I will do it.”

The mother’s eyes beamed with satisfaction, and she said: 

“You will go and find him.  I have known his hiding-place for eleven years; it cost me five years and more of inquiry, and much money, to locate it.  He is a quartz-miner in Colorado, and well-to-do.  He lives in Denver.  His name is Jacob Fuller.  There—­it is the first time I have spoken it since that unforgettable night.  Think!  That name could have been yours if I had not saved you that shame and furnished you a cleaner one.  You will drive him from that place; you will hunt him down and drive him again; and yet again, and again, and again, persistently, relentlessly, poisoning his life, filling it with mysterious terrors, loading it with weariness and misery, making him wish for death, and that he had a suicide’s courage; you will make of him another Wandering Jew; he shall know no rest any more, no peace of mind, no placid sleep; you shall shadow him, cling to him, persecute him, till you break his heart, as he broke my father’s and mine.”