If ever a man needed God’s look at that moment, it was this fugitive. Let it be understood clearly, however, he was not at all the murderer Royal’s imagination had conjured up. That boy’s second sight had been working overtime, and had fallen into error. Except in an indirect way, the man had never been a murderer. He had never desired the death of any human being. Yet he had undoubtedly turned the feet of at least “twelve noble youths” into the roads that lead to death. Also, he was revisiting a scene. Therefore we may as well admit that Royal’s imaginings had strange truths mingled with their errors. Perhaps his visions, like yours and mine, were made up wholly from truths, but truths mysteriously misplaced; truths disordered, and so, unserviceable. The fugitive’s crime, that is to say, the particular crime for which he was at that moment being hunted from hill to hill, was one known to the most ancient civilizations. It takes its title from shameful lost cities engulfed under Divine wrath. Yet to-day there are gentle communities where even its Biblical name, if heard by chance in the pulpit fulminations of some itinerant preacher, would not be understood. And because, deep-rooted in the nature of mankind, there is that which cries out upon this crime as an abomination, the law defines it darkly, and punishes it strictly. “_La nature a de ces bizarreries_”? Only a long-descended Mediterranean intellect, with a planetary point of view, could calmly make that comment on the case! The outlaw lit one of the black cigars, and thrust the thin bars of chocolate into his pocket. Loathsome package food, again, but better than nothing, if worse came to the worst. Of late, he had feared even to enter the crossroads grocery stores, with their meagre yet apparently varied supplies, with their horribly unexpected little electric bulbs illuminating a customer whose trembling hope had been to remain unseen! Royal’s cigar sickened him, and he dropped it, still burning, into the brown pine needles. He watched the tiny, red-rimmed hole it was making. The circle grew larger and larger. Curse it, why not let this be the end-all here? But just as the slowly widening red rim really flickered into a faint blaze, the red on his forehead rushed fiercely over the rest of his face. No, by God, no! Not that way! With his woollen cap he stifled the flame. It died down utterly, and with it his own last remnant of vigor.