Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/244

 pardon and confer wealth--and his disappointment had been so keen--been accompanied with such mortification--that he regarded the man whom he had most injured as the man who had most injured him. But not till now did his angry feelings assume the shape of a definite vengeance. So long as there was a chance that he could extort from Darrell the money that was the essential necessary to his life, he checked his thoughts whenever they suggested a profitless gratification of rage. But now that Darrell had so scornfully and so inexorably spurned all concession--now that nothing was to be wrung from him except by force--force and vengeance came together in his projects. And yet even in the daring outrage he was meditating, murder itself did not stand out as a thought accepted--no; what pleased his wild and turbid imagination was the idea of humiliating by terror the man who had humbled him. To penetrate into the home of this haughty scorner--to confront him in his own chamber at the dead of night, man to man, force to force; to say to him, "None now can deliver you from me--I come no more as a suppliant--I command you to accept my terms"; to gloat over the fears which, the strong man felt assured, would bow the rich man to beg for mercy at his feet;--this was the picture which Jasper Losely conjured up; and even the spoil to be won by violence smiled on him less than the grand position which the violence itself would bestow. Are not nine murders out of ten fashioned thus from conception into deed? "Oh that my enemy were but before me face to face--none to part us!" says the vindictive dreamer. Well, and what then? There, his imagination halts--there he drops the sable curtain; he goes not on to say, "Why, then another murder will be added to the long catalogue from Cain." He palters with his deadly wish, and mutters, perhaps, at most, "Why, then--come what may!"

Losely continued to gaze on the pale walls gleaming through the wintry boughs, as the moon rose high and higher. And now out broke the light from Darrell's lofty casement, and Losely smiled fiercely, and muttered--hark! the very words--"And then! come what may!"

Hoofs are now heard on the hard road, and Jasper is joined by his accomplice.

"Well!" said Jasper.