“A d—d good job too,” replied the clerk. “I should like to serve every — Frenchman in the country the same way.” Zachariah could not listen any longer, but went home, and all night long a continuous series of fearful images passed before his eyes—condemned cells, ropes, gallows and the actual fall of the victim, down to the contortion of his muscles. He made up his mind on the following day that he would see Caillaud before he died, and he told his wife he was going. She was silent for a moment, and then she said: “You will do as you like, I suppose: but I cannot see what is the use of it. You can do no good; you will lose your place here; it will cost you something; and when you get there you may have to stop there.” Zachariah could not restrain himself. “Good God!” he cried, “you hear that one of my best friends is about to be hung, and you sit there like a statue—not a single word of sympathy or horror—you care no more than a stone. _Use_ of going! I tell you I will go if I starve, or have to rot in jail all my lifetime. Furthermore, I will go this instant.” He went out of the room in a rage, rammed a few things into a bag, and was out of the house in ten minutes. He was excusably unjust to his wife—excusably, because he could not help thinking that she was hard, and even cruel. Yet really she was not so, or if she was, she was not necessarily so, for injustice, not only to others, but to ourselves, is always begotten by a false relationship. There were multitudes of men in the world, worse than Zachariah, with whom she would have been, not only happier, but better. He, poor man, with all his virtues, stimulated and developed all that was disagreeable in her.