"But--great Heavens! you say `would have.' They _would_ have done this? Why, even if it had happened, such a revenge as yours would have been too monstrous. Now I begin to see. Yet, in aiding these murderers of women and children, you are sacrificing those who never harmed you. But surely you can never have done this!" "Ha, ha! Really, John Ames, I am beginning to feel I have made a mistake--to feel disappointed in you, in thinking you were made of very different clay to the swaggering, bullet-headed fool, the first article of whose creed is that God made England and the devil the remainder of the world. Well, listen further. To escape from this doom I was forced to flee--to hide myself. And with me went one other. We wandered day after day as you have wandered--we two alone." In spite of his repulsion John Ames was interested, vividly interested. Verily here a fellow-feeling came in. A marvellous change had crept into the face of the other. The hard steely expression, the eyes glittering with hate, had given way to such a look of wondrous softness as seemed incredible that that countenance could take on. "There is a lonely grave in the recesses of the Lebombo Mountains, unmarked, unknown to any but myself. I once had a heart, John Ames, strange to say, and it lies buried there. But every time I return thence it is with the fire renewed within me; and the flames of that fire are the hate of hell for those you were just now describing as `my own countrymen.'" The hopeless pathos, the white-hot revenge running side by side, silenced the listener. There was a fury of passion and of pain here which admitted of no comment. To strive further to drive home his original protest struck him now as impertinent and commonplace. For a while neither spoke.