" How I, too, had longed to
prove my victims in the wrong, and turned away, not only lazily, but
angrily, from many an exculpatory fact! And here was my Nemesis come at
last. As I had done unto others, so it was done unto me!
It was right that it should be so. However indignant, mad, almost
murderous, I felt at the time, I thank God for it now. It is good to be
punished in kind. It is good to be made to feel what we have made others
feel. It is good--anything is good, however bitter, which shows us that
there is such a law as retribution; that we are not the sport of blind
chance or a triumphant fiend, but that there is a God who judges the
earth--righteous to repay every man according to his works.
But at the moment I had no such ray of comfort--and, full of rage and
shame, I dashed the paper down before Mackaye. "How shall I answer him?
What shall I say?"
The old man read it all through, with a grim saturnine smile.
"Hoolie, hoolie, speech, is o' silver--silence is o' gold says Thomas
Carlyle, anent this an' ither matters. Wha'd be fashed wi' sic blethers?
Ye'll just abide patient, and haud still in the Lord, until this tyranny be
owerpast.
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