The Lust of Hate

"If you send him away to the Mail Change," I cried, looking Bartrand square in the eye, "where you hope they won't take him in--and, even if they do, you know they'll not take the trouble to nurse him--you'll be as much a murderer as the man who stabs another to the heart, and so I tell you to your face."

Bartrand came a step closer to me, with his fists clenched and his face showing as white with passion as his tanned skin would permit.

"You call me a murderer, you dog?" he hissed. "Then, by God, I'll act up to what I've been threatening to do these months past and clear you off the place at once. Pack up your traps and make yourself scarce within an hour, o