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kept from the performance by fear of consequences only. With exquisite
cruelty he recalled to my mind, item by item, wrongs and unkindnesses I
had inflicted and humiliations I had put upon friends since dead, "who
died thinking of those injuries, maybe, and grieving over them," he
added, by way of poison to the stab.
"
For instance," said he, "take the case of your younger brother, when
you two were boys together, many a long year ago. He always lovingly
trusted in you with a fidelity that your manifold treacheries were not
able to shake. He followed you about like a dog, content to suffer wrong
and abuse if he might only be with you; patient under these injuries
so long as it was your hand that inflicted them. The latest picture you
have of him in health and strength must be such a comfort to you! You
pledged your honor that if he would let you blindfold him no harm should
come to him; and then, giggling and choking over the rare fun of the
joke, you led him to a brook thinly glazed with ice, and pushed him
in; and how you did laugh! Man, you will never forget the gentle,
reproachful look he gave you as he struggled shivering out, if you live
a thousand years! Oh! you see it now, you see it now!"
"Beast, I have seen it a million times, and shall see it a million more!
and may you rot away piecemeal, and suffer till doomsday what I suffer
now, for bringing it back to me again!"
The dwarf chuckled contentedly, and went on with his accusing history
of my career. I dropped into a moody, vengeful state, and suffered in
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