For the stricken man opened his eyes, his lips moved, and
he groaned: "Constantine! You, Constantine!" and the old woman's eyes
met mine for a moment, and fell to the ground again.
"Why--why, Constantine?" moaned the wounded man. "I had yielded--I had
yielded, Constantine. I would have sent them--" His words ceased, his
eyes closed, his lips met again, but met only to part. A moment later
his jaw dropped. The old lord of Neopalia was dead.
Then I, carried away by anger and by hatred of the man who, for a
reason I did not yet understand, had struck so foul a blow against his
kinsman and an old man, did a thing so rash that it seems to me now,
when I consider it in the cold light of the past, a mad deed. Yet then
I could do nothing else; and Denny's face, aye, and the eyes of the
others, too, told me that they were with me.
"Compose this old man's body," I said, "and we will watch it. And do
you go and tell this Constantine Stefanopoulos that I know his crime,
that I know who struck that blow, and that what I know all men shall
know, and that I will not rest day nor night until he has paid the
penalty of this murder. And tell him I swore this on the honor of an
English gentleman."
"And say I swore it, too!" cried Denny; and Hogvardt and Watkins, not
making bold to speak, ranged up close to me; and I knew that they also
meant what I meant.
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