"Sir, you'll find sinners, great sinners, everywhere. I acknowledge that Texas has been made a kind of receptacle for men too wicked to live among their fellows. I often come upon these wild, carrion jail-birds. I know them a hundred yards off. It is a great thing, every way, that they come here. God be thanked! Texas has nothing to fear from them. In the first place, though the atmosphere of crime is polluting in a large city, it infects nobody here. I tell you, sir, the murderer on a Texas prairie is miserable. There is nothing so terrible to him as this freedom and loneliness, in which he is always in the company of his outraged conscience, which drives him hither and thither, and gives him no rest. For I tell you, that murderers don't willingly meet together, not even over the whisky bottle. They know each other, and shun each other. Well, sir, this subject touches me warmly at present, for I am just come from the death-bed of such a man. I have been with him three days. You remember Bob Black, John?" "Yes. A man who seldom spoke, and whom no one liked. A good soldier, though. I don't believe he knew the meaning of fear." "Didn't he? I have seen him sweat with terror. He has come to me more dead than alive, clung to my arms like a child, begged me to stand between him and the shapes that followed him." "Drunk?" "No, sir. I don't think he ever tasted liquor; but he was a haunted man! He had been a sixfold murderer, and his victims made life a terror to him." "How do you account for that?" "We have a spiritual body, and we have a natural body. When it pleases the Almighty, he opens the eyes and ears of our spiritual body, either for comfort, or advice, or punishment. This criminal saw things and heard words no mortal eyes have perceived, nor mortal ears understood. The man was haunted: I cannot doubt it." "I believe what you say," said Elizabeth, solemnly, "for I have heard, and I have seen." "And so have I," said the preacher, in a kind of rapture. "When I lay sleeping on the St. Mark's one night, I felt the thrill of a mighty touch, and I heard, with my spiritual ears, words which no mortal lips uttered; and I rose swiftly, and saved my life from the Comanche by the skin of my teeth. And another night, as I rode over the Maverick prairie, when it was knee-deep in grass and flowers, and the stars were gathering one by one with a holy air into the house of God, I could not restrain myself, and I sang aloud for joy! Then, suddenly, there seemed to be all around me a happy company, and my spiritual ears were opened, and I heard a melody beyond the voices of earth, and I was not ashamed in it of my little human note of praise. I tell you, death only sets us face to face with Him who is not very far from us at any time." "And Bob is dead?" "Yes; and I believe he is saved." No one spoke; and the preacher, after a minute's silence, asked, "Who doubts?" "A sixfold murderer, you said?"