Lem probed his conscience for the hundredth time in quest of the crime he had committed to bring him to this hell. And when a small voice answered back from out its castle of inherent chauvinism, and told him that he sinned against no man--then it was that the smouldering, dormant hate, sleeping in his heart, stirred and welled up into a mighty tide, effacing all other kindred emotions that had traversed his being upon being jailed. This new force aroused him to action, and somehow he felt better. How strange are the workings of that mystically mated pair--the human heart and brain! How appallingly strange that a phase of hate should assuage the pain in any heart. But this was a truism that for the time inspired Lem to action and forgetfulness of his environments, for now his previously dull eyes were afire, as he turned back into his cell for the first time. He felt his way to the limits of the wall. The distance was a mere three steps for him. Then he turned and took the three steps back to the door. Then back again he went. And thus he took up this three-step march, the while the ugly visage of the revenuer projected itself against the gloom, and he saw Burton's dog-grin. He saw him smear the sweat off his leering face, and fancied he heard his vaunting words of triumph to the commissioner, gloating over the killing of Lem's father, and the taking of himself. And here, while Lem paced to and fro, he forgot all else save his thirst for revenge. And through these walls he heard dim voices from two graves in the hills urging him onward, and he invoked God to give him strength to endure. He vowed that he would be patient and endure, even to the crack of doom, that he might stand face to face with this man-brute, when he, Lem Lutts, would hold the upper hand, in that great day, over this wanton blood-lover who had done these things. Lem's life was linked to this Nemesis by an inexorable blood-debt. He was bonded to the revenuer, with the rigid, unmalleable nexus of hate that naught but annihilation of one or the other could sever. Thus, with these hurtful thoughts whirling through his brain, Lem forgot in a measure, which mitigated the dejection and chagrin imposed by his terrible predicament.