“And what would you have done with him, had you been in my place?” persisted Standish coldly. “Nay, what could be done?” faltered Bradford so lamely that Standish uttered a little bitter laugh of derision. “There you see! You’ve studied Christian charity so long that you will not say Kill him! and your manhood will not let you say Forgive him! and you can find no middle way. “But I, thank God, am not so hampered; and as I finished reading that letter my fist clenched on old Gideon’s hilt, and I promised him that he should carry conviction to that false, proud heart. I would have gone at once, but I saw that my little maid was grievously ill, and I could not leave her; then I saw that she would die, and one day I drew Gideon from his scabbard and thrust his sharp tooth through that cartel,--see, here are the marks of him,--and I bade him hold fast till we could wet that paper in the red ink of my reply”-- But here the governor interrupted him,-- “Myles! Man has no right to predetermine vengeance. In the heat of affront I too might have longed to combat to the death with one who had so lightlied my child, but I never could have stored up death for him like that.” “You were bred to the land and to books, Bradford, and I to arms,” replied the soldier haughtily; and then in sudden revulsion of feeling, he grasped his friend’s hand, saying hoarsely, “I never can be the man you are, Will, and you better deserved than I to have had that saint for a daughter. But come, now, I must e’en tell you the whole, as if ’twere to a father confessor, and, by my faith, I wish you were one, for the old practice rises up in a man’s mind when trouble comes. But there! I won’t rake up old disputes, but rather on with my shrift: I was fully purposed, then, so soon as my sweet maid was gone, to travel to England and seeking out Ralph Standish challenge him to mortal combat, and to thrust my brave old sword with that letter spitted upon its blade through his false heart and so avenge my girl. I was as fully purposed that way as ever I was to eat when I was hungry and saw victual before me, and I’m not more apt to change my purpose than a mastiff is to lose his grip.