But once too often he wreaked his anger upon an innocent person--at least upon a person that for all he knew was innocent--and at one stroke his past injustices were avenged.
It was not chance that killed Colonel Gaylord.

It was the inevitable law of cause and effect.

'Way back in his boyhood when he gave way to his first fit of passion, he sentenced himself to some such end as this.
Every unjust act in his after-life piled up the score against him.
"Oh, I've seen it a hundred times! It's character that tells.

I've seen it happen to a political boss--a man whose business it was to make friends with every voter high and low.

I've seen him forget, just once, and turn on a man, humiliate him, wound his pride, crush him under foot and think no more of the matter than if he had stepped on a worm.