But since resentment for the injury done to them incensed them more against Tarquin himself, than against Servius, and the consideration that a king was likely to prove a more severe avenger of the murder, if he should survive, than a private person; and moreover, even if Servius were put to death, it seemed likely that he would adopt as his successor on the throne whomsoever else he might have selected as his son-in-law.

Little did either dream, at that instant, that this same wayward beingthe creature of passion, and the fierce avenger of all his own fancied griefs, was the cause of the dreadful blow that had so recently fallen on them.

The lone avenger.

And at that thought he wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers.

When he allows the shafts to remain in the wounds, and will not stretch forth a lenient hand, is it wrong, is it not generous to become an indignant avenger?

Bleeding heads and torn limbs were everywhere scattered in the streets; door-posts and curb-stones were dashed with gore; men and women and the children, too, were all relentless avengers of "Il bel Giulio's" blood.

And if we falter, let thy power Thy stern avenger be,

"From our present knowledge the murder lies between the unknown avenger and Hucks, with the possibility that McNutt is implicated.

* Provoked by the sins of the Christians, the Lord hath become as it were a destroying enemy, and a dreadful avenger; having sent among us a prodigiously numerous, most barbarous, and inhuman people, whose law is lawless, and whose wrath is furious, even as the rod of God's anger, overrunning and utterly ruining infinite countries, and cruelly destroying every thing where they come with fire and sword.

But a far greater honour to his death was the public sorrow, especially remarkable in this particular, that the matrons mourned him for a year as a parent, because he had shown himself so vigorous an avenger of violated chastity.

He drew a dozen long breaths before he was again the cold, self-possessed, steely-eyed avenger.

Mechanically, Elizabeth turned her moistened eyes from Edward to Edward's brother, and suddenly clasped her infant closer to her bosom when she caught the glittering and fatal eye of Richard, Duke of GloucesterWarwick's grim avenger in the futurefixed upon that harmless life, destined to interpose a feeble obstacle between the ambition of a ruthless intellect and the heritage of the English throne!

As frequently happens, however, in such deeds of sudden violence, these hasty and lawless avengers found afterward that they had made a mistake, and beheaded the wrong man.