In this way I may hope to gradually prepare your mind for what is to come.
"About three weeks after I wrote to you last, Julian Gray paid the penalty of his headlong rashness.

I do not mean that he suffered any actual violence at the hands of the people among whom he had cast his lot.

On the contrary, he succeeded, incredible as it may appear, in producing a favorable impression on the ruffians about him.

As I understand it, they began by respecting his courage in venturing among them alone; and they ended in discovering that he was really interested in promoting their welfare.

It is to the other peril, indicated in my last letter, that he has fallen a victim--the peril of disease.