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stop like a half-finished tower. But, no—you need build only a foundation. If you give her that, she will continue the structure of heroic memory. She will make for me a tomb of white, inaccurate thoughts.” His throat filled with blood. “Why did you do it, sir?”

The captain looked up from his pistol.

“Do it?” He saw the bloody lips, the torn breast; he started up from his chair and then fell back again. Misery was writing lines about his eyes. “I do not know,” he said. “I must have known, but I have forgotten.”

Cœur de Gris went slowly to his knees. He steadied himself with his knuckles on the floor. “It is my knees, sir; they will not bear me any more,” he apologized. He seemed to be listening for the throbbing sound again. Suddenly his voice rose in bitter complaint.

“It is a legend that dying men think of their deeds done. No— No— I think of what I have not done—of what I might have done in the years that are dying with me. I think of the lips of women have never seen—of the wine that is sleeping in a grape seed—of the quick, warm caress of my mother in Goaves. But mostly I think that I shall never walk about again—never, never stroll in the sunshine nor smell the rich essences the full moon conjures up out of the earth— Sir, why did you do it?”

Henry Morgan was staring at the pistol again. “I do not know,” he muttered sullenly. “I must have known, but I have forgotten. I killed a dog