A stain that is deep red is proof that the injury is comparatively recent.

Externally the book showed manifest traces of a schoolboy's ownership, in broken corners; plentiful ink-stains, from exercises and punishments; droppings of illicit candle grease, consumed long after curfew-time; round marks like fairy rings on a greensward, which indicated the standpoint of extinct jam potswhere are those jam pots now?

The one stain on his name is his massacre of the townsfolk of Limoges.

There seems little question that the stains are blood, and that makes the whole business still more puzzling.

That is where the stain was,the bloody stain that held the leaves

Then he struck a match, shaded it from the breeze with his hand, and saw that the handkerchief was stained with ink, and that the stains were letters, roughly printed to make them distinct.

But is it a sin to fear sin?the declension of one's own best will, the staining of one's purest feeling?