Every man braced himself up in his seat.
"Why, how's that, lawyer ?" said a townsman who sat tailor-fashion on a bench; he would hardly have been surprised if the lawyer had proved beyond question that he swam swanlike among the Isles of Greece.
"I'll tell you a story," said the gentleman addressed.

"There was an ancient family in Yorkshire, and the lord of the house was of a very splenetive temper.

One day in a fit of jealousy he killed his wife, and put to death all of his children who were at home by throwing them over the battlements of his castle.

He had one remaining child, and it was an infant, and was nursed at a farmhouse a mile away.

He had set out for the farm with an intent to destroy his only remaining child, when a storm of thunder and lightning came on, and he stopped." "Thought it was a warning, I should say," interrupted a listener.
"It awakened the compunctions of conscience, and he desisted from his purpose." "Well ?" "What do you think he did next ?" "Cannot guess--drowned himself ?" "No, and this proves what I say, that a murderer and a hero are all but one.