MR. X, Yes, I, and none else! Perhaps you don't care to shake
hands with a murderer?

MR. Y. [Pleasantly] Oh, what nonsense!

MR. X. Yes, but I have not been punished,

ME. Y. [Growing more familiar and taking on a superior tone] So
much the better for you!--How did you get out of it?

MR. X. There was nobody to accuse me, no suspicions, no witnesses.
This is the way it happened. One Christmas I was invited to hunt
with a fellow-student a little way out of Upsala. He sent a
besotted old coachman to meet me at the station, and this fellow
went to sleep on the box, drove the horses into a fence, and upset
the whole _equipage_ in a ditch. I am not going to pretend that my
life was in danger. It was sheer impatience which made me hit him
across the neck with the edge of my hand--you know the way--just
to wake him up--and the result was that he never woke up at all,
but collapsed then and there.

MR. Y. [Craftily] And did you report it?

MR. X. No, and these were my reasons for not doing so. The man
left no family behind him, or anybody else to whom his life could
be of the slightest use. He had already outlived his allotted
period of vegetation, and his place might just as well be filled
by somebody more in need of it. On the other hand, my life was
necessary to the happiness of my parents and myself, and perhaps
also to the progress of my science. The outcome had once for all