“Now you know why I will not help you, why I am ready to see you perish. It was my wife whom you slew in your murderous wrath, and for this I hate and loathe you. She had wronged me more than any human being on earth, but I never once thought of ending her frail, butterfly existence by violence. I exiled myself for her sake, and left her to the pleasures that tempted her, the pleasures she could buy with the gold for which she had sold herself to me. And, God help me, some of the love I once bore her lingers in me yet, and prompts me to pity her for her terrible fate, and to hate you because your cruel hand plunged the murderous dagger into the white breast that was once mine!” He paused, and one of those men who loved him as chosen comrades love each other, called out furiously: “He shall pay for his devil’s crime with his worthless life!” Those words were the signal for an attack upon Ferris. The men sprang at him in a body, and in spite of his desperate struggles and outcries they succeeded in pinioning his arms and legs so that it was impossible for him to move from the spot. During the enactment of the dreadful scene, Talbot Strangemore, Ralph St. Alban, and Harvey Wilson stood apart with folded arms and gloomy brows looking on. A great struggle was going on in Talbot Strangemore’s mind. Pity and humanity alike prompted him to rescue Oswald Ferris from the wrath of the justly angry mob, while at the same time the natural indignation and resentment within him held him sternly back. “He deserves his fate,” clamored justice. “Think of Sibyl St. Alban’s dreadful death, and of Nina’s unmerited disgrace and suffering with the shadow of the scaffold looming over her golden head. Let him die the most ignominious death possible, and even then he would scarcely have atoned for his sins.” And yet his better nature revolted against the horrible deed they were going to do out there beneath the palms of old Egypt with the murmur of the storied Nile in their ears. It was a horrible thing after all, he thought, to thrust a guilty, craven, crime-stained soul out of its earthly tabernacle and send it wandering through space to the terrors of judgment. Unconsciously he lifted his eyes to the sky. The blue dome sprinkled with innumerable stars, and the great calm moon rolling through illimitable space, suggested heavenly witnesses. He shuddered through his whole frame. “Do God’s angels behold this scene?” he asked himself in fear and dread, for already the men had selected a rope and a tree, and without even the formal ceremony of a mock trial were about to lead their captive to his doom. Suddenly even as they had dragged him to the chosen spot and were adjusting the terrible slip-knot about his neck, Talbot Strangemore stepped boldly forward, held up his hand, and hoarsely shouted: “Hold!” They desisted from their awful occupation a moment to look around in amazement.