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STRONG AS DEATH. 293and the sense of the boy's instrumentality becameunbearably degrading to him, wounding himwhere he was most vulnerable.Thus all black and evil passions raged in hisheart; and as his yvife looked in his face, sheread them there as in a printed book, and onceagain the feeling oflast night came over her, ofthe strangeness of a sudden cessation to all this,and also somethingolike a drearv satisfaction inthe knoyvledge that it was yvithin her power andhis to bidit all cease — to have done yvithit.Looking at him, and thinking this, if thestrange dream of her mind may be called thought,the curiosity of the crowd began to anger her alittle. What yvas the dead man to them, thenameless stranger, that they should care for thediscovery — that they should come here to see theagony of another man, destined, like the first, todie ?The popular instinct filled her with loathing,but only momentarily; she forgot to think of itthe next minute, and the vagueness came again,the film and the dimness, and again the acutedistinctness of sound,the intensity of vision.It yvas over at length. The prisoner was com-_