We have had a death here." Said Dick: "Well, you should get over that, neighbour: such things must be." "Yes," Walter said, "but this was a death by violence, and it seems likely to lead to at least one more; and somehow it makes us feel rather shy of one another; and to say the truth, that is one reason why there are so few of us present to-night." "Tell us the story, Walter," said Dick; "perhaps telling it will help you to shake off your sadness." Said Walter: "Well, I will; and I will make it short enough, though I daresay it might be spun out into a long one, as used to be done with such subjects in the old novels.

There is a very charming girl here whom we all like, and whom some of us do more than like; and she very naturally liked one of us better than anybody else.

And another of us (I won't name him) got fairly bitten with love-madness, and used to go about making himself as unpleasant as he could--not of malice prepense, of course; so that the girl, who liked him well enough at first, though she didn't love him, began fairly to dislike him.

Of course, those of us who knew him best--myself amongst others--advised him to go away, as he was making matters worse and worse for himself every day.

Well, he wouldn't take our advice (that also, I suppose, was a matter of course), so we had to tell him that he _must_ go, or the inevitable sending to Coventry would follow; for his individual trouble had so overmastered him that we felt that _we_ must go if he did not.
"He took that better than we expected, when something or other--an interview with the girl, I think, and some hot words with the successful lover following close upon it, threw him quite off his balance; and he got hold of an axe and fell upon his rival when there was no one by; and in the struggle that followed the man attacked, hit him an unlucky blow and killed him.