“Yes,” she sighed, “there is that to be thought of. Oh, my dearest and best, why did you ever link your life with that of a Judge’s daughter? I feel as if I had lured him to his doom. I might have foreseen the danger. I ought never to have married. What right had I? Some discharged felon lay in wait for him—some relentless, Godless, hopeless wretch—whom my father had condemned to long imprisonment—whose angry heart my father had scorched with his scathing speech. I have read some of his summings up, and they have seemed cruel, cruel, cruel—so cold, so deliberate, so like a god making light of the sins of men. Some wretch, coming maddened out of his silent cell, and seeing my husband—that white, pure life, that brave, strong youth—prosperous, honoured, happy—seeing what a good man’s life can be—lay in wait like a tiger, to destroy that happy life. If it was not one of the Strangways who killed him, it must have been such a man.” Her eyes shone, and her cheeks flushed with a feverish red. Theodore took her hand, held it in both his own, and bent to kiss the cold fingers—not with a lover’s ardour, fondly as he loved; but with a calm and brotherly affection which soothed her agitated heart. He loved her well enough to be able to subjugate himself for her sake. “My dear Juanita, if you would only withdraw your thoughts from this ghastly subject! I will not ask you to forget. That may be impossible. I entreat you only to be patient, to leave the chastisement of crime to Providence, which works in the dark, works silently, inevitably, to the end for which we can only grope in a lame and helpless fashion. Be sure the murderer will stand revealed sooner or later. That cruel murder will not be his last crime, and in his next act of violence he may be less fortunate in escaping every human eye. Or if that act is to be the one solitary crime of his life something will happen to betray him—some oversight of his own, or some irrepressible movement of a guilty conscience will give his life to the net, as a bird flies into a trap. I beseech you, dear, let your thoughts dwell upon less painful subjects—for your own sake—for the sake——” He faltered, and left his sentence unfinished, and Juanita knew that his sisters had told him something. She knew that the one hope of her blighted life, hope which she had hardly recognized as hope yet awhile, was known to him. “I can never cease to think of that night, or to pray that God will avenge that crime,” she said, firmly. “You think that is an unchristian prayer perhaps, but what does the Scripture say? ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ Christ came to confirm that righteous law. Oh! it is well to be a humanitarian—to sign petitions against capital punishment,—but let your nearest and dearest be murdered, and you will be quick to recognize the justice of that old inexorable law—a life for a life. That is what _I_ want, Theodore—the life of the man who killed my husband.”