with; the life of his murderer lay at his mercy, and he panted—with brute thirsty perhaps—to take it, and trample it ont on the sands in a just and pitiless vengeance. Yet—he did not fire.
All that was boldest and truest in him refused to let him do as he had been done by;—forbade him. to shoot down an unarmed man.
With the hoofs now thundering loud on barren rock, now scattering in clouds the loosened sand, now trampling out the fragrance from acres of wild myrtles and basilica, he rode on in close hot chase, the bridle held in the grip of his teeth, his rifle covering his assassin, while Conrad Phaulcon fled for his life. A single shot, from an aim which never missed, and the coward would be slain as he would have slain, would die the death that he would have dealt; a single ball sent screaming, with its shrill hiss, crash through his spine, and he would drop from the saddle dead as a dog. The Greek knew that as well as the man who held his life in his hands, to take it when he would; and the sweat of his agony gathered in great drops on his brow, the horror of his death-blow seemed to him to quiver already through all his limbs, and as he turned in his saddle once—once only—he saw the stretching head of the Monarch within fifty paces, the face of his pursuer
