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There will be again a cry of shocked horror from Western Europe as to these "quarrelsome and bloodthirsty" Balkan peoples. But in fair play and justice there is more reason for the little Balkan peoples to be shocked and horrified at the cold-blooded policy of the Great Powers who, for their own ends, create conditions which make peace in the Balkans impossible.

I stared at him a second. It was certainly an astounding question, coming from that source more like the language of the villain in a howling melodrama than a cold-blooded inquiry that called for a serious answer. But he was looking at me soberly enough; and he wasn't in the habit of saying startling things, unless there was a fairly solid basis of truth in them.

"His gold came out of one of those pokes, and it's fresh from the mint. But I guess he's earned all he's got, every cent. I'll bet he's starved and froze; suffered ways we don't know. And he's spending it on a girl. I'd like to see her. Maybe she's the cold-blooded kind that'll snub him and make fun of this chiffon."

"Do you mean in your cold-blooded heart, that, because you, who have no claim to the child but that of self-indulgence because you believe her yours, I who have for years carried her in my bosom, am going to give her up to a man, who, all these years, has made not one effort to discover his missing child? In the sight of God, which of us is her father?

"Rhapsodies," he said, "which proved that all Europe might crumble without exciting a single emotion of sorrow, astonishment, or satisfaction in a people degraded beneath all others, beneath all imagination, and which, worn out, demoralized to the point where every trace of even national feeling is wiped out, by nineteen years of revolution and crimes, now looks on with cold-blooded indifference at what is passing beyond its own frontiers.

"For cold-blooded, systematic villainy I believe I am listening to the limit!" quivered Lieutenant Dick Prescott under his breath. "They're insane, these people," was Tom's inward comment. "Let this crowd of scoundrels shoot up the jail guards, and do they think the citizens would ever allow the gang to operate in camp? There'd be more likelihood of the known members of the gang being lynched!"

The latter, with his wife, had been landed there by the Annapolis, which had promptly gone on with its cargo of astronomers to Fiji. "It was cold-blooded, deliberate attempt to murder," said Consul Lingford. "The law shall take its course. I don't know how precisely to deal with this Captain Dettmar, but if he comes to Attu-Attu, depend upon it he shall be dealt with, he ah shall be dealt with.

Was it? Like a bolt from the heavens, into the very midst of the cold-blooded, murderous triumph, came a long-neglected form of words, writing itself in flaming letters in his brain: Thou shall do no murder. And after it another: But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.

The trial of the actual murderer and of those who aided and abetted him abundantly demonstrated the cold-blooded premeditation which characterized this crime. Numerous consultations had taken place ever since the previous September between the murderer and his accomplices as to the manner and time of the deed.

They have assigned to her certain characteristics without which cruel and cold-blooded murder would be inconceivable; but they have afforded us no insight into the moral conditions and, mental processes which make it, not only conceivable, but almost an everyday occurrence.