“Regicide!” I cried, losing all patience, “give us the plain English of it, Father Hamilton, and call it murder. To call it by a Latin name makes it none the more respectable a crime against the courts of heaven where the curse of Babel has an end. But for an accident, or the cunning of others, you had a corpse upon your conscience this day, and your name had been abhorred throughout the whole of Europe.” He put his shoulders up till his dew-laps fell in massive folds. “'Fore God!” said he, “here's a treatise in black letter from Andrew Greig's nephew. It comes indifferently well, I assure thee, from Andrew's nephew. Those who live in glass houses, _cher ami_,--those who live in glass houses----” He tapped me upon the breast with his fat finger and paused, with a significant look upon his countenance. “Oh, ye can out with it, Father Hamilton!” I cried, certain I knew his meaning. “Those who live in glass houses,” said he, “should have some pity for a poor old devil out in the weather without a shelter of any sort.” “You were about to taunt me with my own unhappy affair,” I said, little relishing his consideration. “Was I, M. Greig?” he said softly. “Faith! a glass residence seems to breed an ungenerous disposition! If thou can'st credit me I know nothing of thine affair beyond what I may have suspected from a Greig travelling hurriedly and in red shoes. I make you my compliments, Monsieur, of your morality that must be horror-struck at my foolish play with a pistol, yet thinks me capable of a retort so vile as that you indicate. My dear lad, I but spoke of what we have spoken of together before in our happy chariot in the woods of Somme--thine uncle's fate, and all I expected was, that remembering the same, thou his nephew would'st have enough tolerance for an old fool to leave his punishment in the hands of the constitute authority. _Voilà!_ I wish to heaven they had given me another cell, after all, that I might have imagined thy pity for one that did thee no harm, or at least meant to do none, which is the main thing with all our acts else Purgatory's more crowded than I fancy.” He went wearily over to the fire and spread his trembling hands to the blaze; I looked after him perplexed in my mind, but not without an overpowering pity. “I have come, like thyself, doubtless,” he said after a little, “over vile roads in a common cart, and lay awake last night in a dungeon--a pretty conclusion to my excursion! And yet I am vastly more happy to-day than I was this time yesterday morning.” “But then you were free,” I said, “you had all you need wish for--money, a conveyance, servants, leisure----” “And M' Croque-mort's company,” he added with a poor smile. “True, true! But the thing was then to do,” and he shuddered. “Now my part is done, 'twas by God's grace a failure, and I could sing for content like one of the little birds we heard the other day in Somme.” He could not but see my bewilderment in my face.