"It is impossible for them to be too black," Strogue replied with an ominous smile. "Sûr Imar's life is not worth the lump of sugar melting under this glass pestle. Hafer's heart is vile enough, but a viler heart, and a brain ten times as resolute and as deep as his, are set upon poor Sûr Imar's death. I see it all now with the help of what you tell me. I took it in quite another light before. There is one thing still that I cannot understand. I fell out with that miscreant first, because I found that he wanted me to lend a hand to get you put out of the way, as if I were one of his tribesmen. What puzzles me beyond everything is that he never tried it." "He did try it, and a very narrow shave I had. It was the very night after I saw you with him." Then I told Strogue the particulars of that cowardly and cold-blooded attempt, and Stepan's conclusion about it. "It is impossible to doubt it. The murderous sneak! One thing I can tell you, young man; that marriage of your friend has saved your family the expenses of your funeral. Two days more in that part of the world would have sent you to your last account. He would never have shot at you again; such is their superstition, that he believes you invulnerable by bullet; but he would have put a long dagger into you, springing from a corner in the dark. At that game you would have no chance with him, even if you were on the outlook. You are stronger than he is, I daresay; but he is the most lissome fellow I have ever met, and I have handled a good many twisters and skippers in the way of savages. And to think that I should be almost trodden into dust, like the emmets in a hymn I used to learn, by a trumpery lot of common cockneys. It was contempt of the enemy that did it, a thing that generally ensures defeat. None of that now, that won't do now. Cranleigh, we shall have to do all we know; and the chances are that it will never be enough. It is not for Hafer, so much as that fiend of a woman, who stands behind him. One of the worst that ever walked this earth, and that is no small order, I can tell you. A bad woman is blacker than a man, as many shades as gas-tar is than Stockholm pitch." "But who is it? Who is it? You have hinted that before. What woman in the world would hurt Sûr Imar, who looks upon them all as angels, in the reaction from his great mistake?"