CHAPTER XXI.
TRAITORS AT WORK.
When a man has done another a very great favour he naturally gets to like him, and reposes confidence in him. He is apt to make him free of his house and secrets, and treat him as if there had been a long-standing friendship between them. He considers that, if safe anywhere, he must be safe with the man he has befriended.
Whether the confidence so naturally reposed is justified by results is a doubtful question which has often been replied to in the negative. It all depends upon the nature of the man befriended. To bestow a benefit denotes a generous nature; to receive a benefit means nothing. The recipient may be a mean and malignant recipient of grace, without a spark of grace himself, or he may have nobility enough to feel, in its great and sacred meaning, the obligation.
Dr Fernandez and his three companions had received the greatest favour that human beings can receive from their fellows, and which ought to have rendered them staunch and loyal, even in spite of their faithless and bitter creed; and their honest, if rough, benefactors
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