"I too," said Dirk. But I knew he was referring to the mark of the fire. Still excitedly urging Dirk to let me have the killing of the fellow I yet had space in my mind for the thought that I knew now where the mark of the fire had come from. It was from that night in the blazing hut where my father had burnt his hand. Evidently the old witch hadn't crawled free without a trace of the flames. All that part of the story was instantaneously clear to me. The fellow had betrayed the smugglers, as my father had said, so as to cast suspicion on him; and had laid a snare for him by informing the smugglers that they would know their betrayer by the mark of the fire on his hand. But the sign that was to have betrayed my father had merely served to lead his enemy into his own trap. All this was a mere flash of thought. I didn't cease crying to Dirk, "I tell you; look at his right hand; inside. There's the marks of the nails." Dirk pressed at the clenched fist, and slowly the fingers opened, revealing those two jagged tell-tale scars. I opened out my own hand beside that of my enemy's for Dirk to see, for he knew the story of that chase across the sands. "Yus," he said at length, "you're right, kiddy. It's the same cove we've been after all the time. But I dessay you'd better let me have the settling of him." "No, no," I cried, for my thirst for vengeance, so easily allayed, was whipped into a madness at the actual sight of my father's murderer. Dirk still delayed, gripping the fellow in his huge embrace, while I continued to cry, "Let me, Dirk, let me. I can fight him. I'll kill him." All this while the look in the man's eyes was altogether incomprehensible. For Dirk he had nothing but the evillest hatred I had ever seen on any face; yet for me he had a look almost of tenderness. But his countenance was so shifting in its expression that it wasn't the same for half a minute together. In my frenzy I noticed little of this at the time, except that it seemed to me that he felt some kind of wicked gratitude for my appeal to Dirk to spare him so that I might settle my own account of blood. I guessed he spied a loophole of safety, as he would only have a boy to fight. This imagined slight which I sensed in his contempt for me angered me the more, till I fevered for his blood. Eventually my clamouring prevailed upon Dirk, though I could see he was unwilling to let me risk myself in fight against the fellow. But as he said, "You've more to pay than I have, Tommy. You have first claim."