Argosy, Vol. 1 (December 9, 1882) — page 136: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Bit ERmEE ee Tee en. EEE eel EES AN UNSETTLED ACCOUNT. 129 The air of the house seemed unusually close and hot, and there was a pun- gent smell. He coughed once or twice as he opened the front door, and welcomed the keen night air as a relief, from what he scarcely knew. Once in the street, he walked briskly away from the house. It was all over! He pulled out his watch, and, holding it up to the street lamp, saw that it was after two o’clock, too late for him to go to the club, as he should like to do. | His abstinence of the past forty eight hours wac beginning to tell upon him, and he felt nervous and restless. It was all over, he thought jubilantly, walking fast. Chris Courtney was going to pay up; the world wouldn’t be burdened with him much longer; there was to be vengeance for Alice in the asylum, and for that dead woman to whom he was so dear. | He had waited long for it, but it was his now! The morning papers would tell how they found him, dead on the rug in front of his library fire. Oh, it was just, it was right that such a man should go! The cold air seemed to act like a damper on his hot, vengeful thoughts. Try as he would, it was not possible to keep from a feeling of pity for the man he had left, and this feeling was making Daunt painfully unhappy. “ Poor beggar!” he thought, walking faster, “ he might have had time to repent. It was very quick, horribly quick!” A neighboring steeple struck the quarter. Daunt shivered. “ I wonder if he has done it yet? ”’ he questioned. The idea conjured up a picture, and in an instant Daunt’s mind was being pursued into corners by an unimaginable horror—the room he had left, as he had left it, with the dying fire; and on the hearth rug a twisted, distorted form, lying quite still, and with a smoking pistol in 1ts hand. An awful way to meet death! Death! the word touched his mind like a cold:finger. He stopped, walked on more slowly, and then stopped again. Had he fully realized what it meant, his reparation? And after all, was it his to require? He groaned aloud in his hesitation. He hated Chris, he told himtelf; hated him as a deadly enemy. Yet who was he to go to him, giving him no chance, try, judge, and condemn him, and then go away grimly, leav-_ ing the execution in the victim’s own hands? Ah, surely, even with Alice and his mother where they were, and his injury so fresh and bleeding, surely it was a dreadful thing to do! To send the man out of life, alone, with no pity, no help, no hope! To let them find him silent, dead in his own room, without a chance, a word! The neighboring steeple clanged the half hour. Daunt turned and fled down the street like a madman. His possessing thought was to be in time. Oh, if he had already done it! It must not be, it was not just nor right! Let his injuries be, they were done; let him fight Chris in broad daylight, but not this! He began to find excuses for his enemy, and to accuse himself of haste and harshness. He had left him alone to die, and would not give him a hand in forgiveness | Daunt was running with all his might now, and was near his goal. As he 9 eonnlicbhoe ‘SS COLNT