Eagerly, gluttonously, triumphantly, his eyes travelled down the sheet, and rested on the name at its foot. He thrust out a rigid finger, and pointed to it. “Carlo, si! Buono Dio! Challie Skene--yes.” “What about Charles Skene?” “Dalston murder him, signore.” CHAPTER XXI. SNOW AND FIRE It was a monstrous tale that he unfolded to me, scarce credible for the guile, the inhuman persecution, the infernal callousness which it revealed. And yet I could not but accept it as consistent and convincing. There are men born, one knows, without the moral bias--brutes “thrown back” on the primordial instincts for lust and blood. But that learning and culture could be acquired merely to the exploiting of such primitive passions was a stupendous enlightening. There is a horrible tale of Hawthorne’s, which depicts the agony of a clean and sensitive soul upon discovering accidentally that _all_ the brother and sister souls of his familiar intercourse are on secret midnight terms with the powers of darkness. I think I experienced something of that ghastly disillusionment now. Where was the good of refining and refining on our natures, if at the end such bestiality remained possible to them? Better the snake and the lion, hunting their prey on the plain issues of hunger. My blood became water as I listened; the knees of my soul grew sick under me. What had this man not suffered of unspeakable persecution, if his story were to be believed! And I saw no reason to doubt it. The perspective it appeared to open out to me of revelations affecting my own interests was obscured for the moment in the contemplation of his wilder wrongs. And yet I could not but admit he had deserved badly of Fate. If his spirit of vengeance was justified, the spirit which had involved him in it was vile. Yet assuredly, sinner as he was, he had atoned a hundredfold. His back (he showed it me) was scored with ineffaceable marks of that discipline. His soul (and he showed me that too) was still deeper scored. He was delivered, had delivered himself, a fearful brand of retribution into my hand. I talked with him till late that night, and far into the following morning. I had made him up a bed on the sofa, and there had become no question but that he was to remain with me until this riddle of our common destiny was resolved. I found in him, or believed I had found, a minister, a witness, a testifier to things potential but unspeakable. They will be touched upon in due time. In the meanwhile he dwelt suspended between a mortal hatred on the one side and a blind devotion on the other. “What,” I said once to him, “if I were to tell you, Geoletti, that this man Dalston is my friend?” He rose to his feet, and begged me, in great emotion, to unsay my question; to reassure him; not to drive him mad.