“They killed her, madam, as they have killed many another. How it was that they killed the woman whose death had filled this rough man’s life with grief and despair, I do not know. But they killed her. Some murderous human hand shattered a scheme that the Almighty himself had laid. I wish you could have heard him say, ‘She’s dead, boys, she’s dead; and by God! they killed her.’ The sound of its agony would have found the heart that was intended to do more than keep you alive with its beating. Do you know what murder is? Do you know the difference between the gross, stupid, brutal murder that in satisfying its coarse lust for blood runs its thick neck into the halter, and the finer, daintier, infinitely more cruel murder that kills with torturing cruelty, and thus outwits the gallows? The blood-murderer is a poor fool, dwarfed in mind and crippled in soul. Perhaps he gets his full punishment when the law stretches his useless neck. But the murderer who outwits the law in his killing, who murders the innocent and unsuspecting and confiding, who makes friendship the cup from which the poison is drunk, who employs the most damnable lies and treachery, who calmly watches the increasing agonies of his victim as the poison slowly does its work,--what punishment do you think can reach such a murderer as that?” The young man’s voice had become loud, harsh, and threatening. Violent emotions were stirring him. His whole slender frame seemed to have expanded. His face was flushed, his eyes were blazing, his fingers clutched at invisible things, his entire aspect was menacing. His guest, awed and terrified, raised her glance to his face. “And by whom is such a murder done?” he cried. “It is done by one who, coming into the world with a soul fresh and complete from the hands of the Creator, deliberately turns aside from the way of nature and nature’s God, crushes the attributes that form our one link with heaven and our one hope of immortality, throttles all that might be useful in bringing light and strength into the lives of others, and in shameless defiance of the Almighty’s manifest will sets up false gods to worship, sacrifices self-respect for self-love, banishes the essence of life and clings to the dross, and wallows like swine in a mire of his own making. The blood-murderer is infinitely better than that. He has at least a human heart in all its savage majesty.