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But he came back in the night and sat beside her, and remained there till the sun grew bright, and then through another day and night, until they bore her out of the little house by the river to the frozen hill-side.

Sitting here in this winter desolation Jaspar Hume once more beheld these scenes of twenty years before and followed himself, a poor dispensing clerk in a doctor’s office, working for that dream of achievement in which his mother believed; for which she hoped. And following further the boy that was himself, he saw a friendless first-year man at college, soon, however, to make a friend of Clive Lepage, and to see always the best of that friend, being himself so true. At last the day came when they both graduated together in science, a bright and happy day, succeeded by one still brighter, when they both entered a great firm as junior partners. Afterwards befell the meeting with Rose Varcoe; and he thought of how he praised his friend Lepage to her, and brought him to be introduced to her. He recalled all those visions that came to him when, his professional triumphs achieved, he should have a happy home, and happy faces by his fireside. And the face was to be that of Rose Varcoe, and the others, faces of those who should be like her and like himself. He saw, or rather felt, that face clouded and anxious when he went away ill and blind for health’s sake. He did not write to her. The doctors forbade him that. He did not ask her to write, for his was so steadfast a nature that he did not need letters to keep him true; and he thought she must be the same. He did not understand a woman’s heart, how it needs remembrances, and needs to give remembrances.

Hume’s face in the light of this fire seemed calm and cold, yet behind it was an agony of memory–the memory of the day when he discovered that Lepage was married to Rose, and that the trusted friend had grown famous and well-to-do on the offspring of his brain. His first thought had been one of fierce determination to expose this man who had falsified all trust. But then came the thought of the girl, and, most of all, there came the words of his dying mother, “Be good, my boy, and God will make you great”; and for his mother’s sake he had compassion on the girl, and sought no restitution from her husband. And now, ten years later, he did not regret that he had stayed his hand. The world had ceased to call Lepage a genius. He had not fulfilled the hope once held of him. Hume knew this from occasional references in scientific journals.

And now he was making this journey to save, if he could, Lepage’s life. Though just on the verge of a new era in his career–to give to the world the fruit of ten years’ thought and labour, he had set all behind him, that he might be true to the friendship of his youth, that he might be clear of the strokes of conscience to the last hour of his life.

Looking round him now, the debating look came again into his eyes. He placed his hand in his breast, and let it rest there for a moment. The look became certain and steady, the hand was drawn out, and in it was a Book of Common Prayer. Upon the fly-leaf was written: “Jane Hume, to her dear son Jaspar, on his twelfth birthday.”

These men of the White Guard were not used to religious practices, whatever their past had been in that regard, and at any other time they might have been surprised at this action of their leader. Under some circumstances it might have lessened their opinion of him; but his influence over them now was complete. They knew they were getting nearer to him than they had ever done; even Cloud-in-the-Sky appreciated that. Hume spoke no word to them, but looked at them and stood up. They all did the same, Jeff Hyde leaning on the shoulders of Gaspe Toujours. He read first, four verses of the Thirty-first Psalm, then followed the prayer of St. Chrysostom, and the beautiful collect which appeals to the Almighty to mercifully look upon the infirmities of men, and to stretch forth His hand to keep and defend them in all dangers and necessities. Late Carscallen, after a long pause, said “Amen,” and Jeff said in a whisper to Gaspe Toujours: “That’s to the point. Infirmities and dangers and necessities is what troubles us.”