There is many a man who has a hatred so intense that noth-
ing but the death of the detested one will satisfy it. A still
fewer number thirst for a more comprehensive retribution:
they would slay perhaps a half-dozen persons ; and there may
be such gluttons of revenge as would not be satisfied with the
sacrifice of less than a score or two, but such would be mon-
sters of whom there have been very few, even in fiction. How
must they all bow their diminished heads before a man who fed
his animosity fat with tens of thousands of lives.
But, what also militates greatly against the presumption that



A STORY OF EEBEL MILITARY PRISONS. 565

either revenge or an abnormal predisposition to cruelty could
have animated Winder, is that tiie possession of any two such
mental traits so strongly marked would presuppose a corre-
sponding activity of other intellectual faculties, which was not
true of him, as from all I can learn of him his mind was in no
respect extraordinary.
It does not seem possible that he had either the brain to
conceive, or the firmness of purpose to carry out so gigantic
and long-enduring a career of cruelty, because that would imply
superhuman qualities in a man who had previously held his own
very poorly in the competition with other men.
