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“I don’t go so far as to call him an unconvicted criminal, but I’ll swear his record isn’t clear as daylight, and I’m morally convinced that if men’s deeds were written on their foreheads Carleton Barker, esquire, would wear his hat down over his eyes. I don’t like him. I instinctively dislike him. Did you see the look in his eyes when I mentioned the knife?”

“I did,” I replied. “And it made me shudder.”

“It turned every drop of blood in my veins cold,” said Parton. “It made me feel that if he had had that knife within reach he would have trampled it to powder, even if every stamp of his foot cut his flesh through to the bone. Malignant is the word to describe that glance, and I’d rather encounter a rattle-snake than see it again.”

Parton spoke with such evident earnestness that I took refuge in silence. I could see just where a man of Parton’s temperament–which was cold and eminently judicial even when his affections were concerned–could find that in Barker at which to cavil, but, for all that, I could not sympathize with the extreme view he took of his character. I have known many a man upon whose face nature has set the stamp of the villain much more deeply than it was impressed upon Barker’s countenance, who has lived a life most irreproachable, whose every act has been one of unselfishness and for the good of mankind; and I have also seen outward appearing saints whose every instinct was base; and it seemed to me that the physiognomy of the unfortunate victim of the moss-covered rock and vindictive knife was just enough of a medium between that of the irredeemable sinner and the sterling saint to indicate that its owner was the average man in the matter of vices and virtues. In fact, the malignancy of his expression when the knife was mentioned was to me the sole point against him, and had I been in his position I do not think I should have acted very differently, though I must add that if I thought myself capable of freezing any person’s blood with an expression of my eyes I should be strongly tempted to wear blue glasses when in company or before a mirror.

“I think I’ll send my card up to him, Jack,” I said to Parton, when we had returned to the hotel, “just to ask how he is. Wouldn’t you?”

“No!” snapped Parton. “But then I’m not you. You can do as you please. Don’t let me influence you against him–if he’s to your taste.”

“He isn’t at all to my taste,” I retorted. “I don’t care for him particularly, but it seems to me courtesy requires that we show a little interest in his welfare.”

“Be courteous, then, and show your interest,” said Parton. “I don’t care as long as I am not dragged into it.”

I sent my card up by the boy, who, returning in a moment, said that the door was locked, adding that when he had knocked upon it there came no answer, from which he presumed that Mr. Barker had gone to sleep.

“He seemed all right when you took his supper to his room?” I queried.

“He said he wouldn’t have any supper. Just wanted to be left alone,” said the boy.

“Sulking over the knife still, I imagine,” sneered Parton; and then he and I retired to our room and prepared for bed.

I do not suppose I had slept for more than an hour when I was awakened by Parton, who was pacing the floor like a caged tiger, his eyes all ablaze, and laboring under an intense nervous excitement.

“What’s the matter, Jack?” I asked, sitting up in bed.

“That d–ned Barker has upset my nerves,” he replied. “I can’t get him out of my mind.”

“Oh, pshaw!” I replied. “Don’t be silly. Forget him.”

“Silly?” he retorted, angrily. “Silly? Forget him? Hang it, I would forget him if he’d let me–but he won’t.”