A MAN CROSSED WITH ADVERSITY

"One sole desire, one passion now remains
To keep life's fever still within his veins,
Vengeance! dire vengeance on the wretch who cast
O'er him and all he loved that ruinous blast."

—Lalla Rookh.

It was late in the evening when David returned to his apartments, excited, triumphant, eager.

"Well," he cried, rushing impetuously up to Mantel, who stood waiting for him. "Is he still there? Is that place really his home?"

"Yes," his friend answered; "he has lived there for more than a year, in solitude and poverty. His health is very poor and he is growing steadily weaker. He has declined so much recently that now he does not venture out until the afternoon."

"Feeble, is he? Poor old man!" exclaimed David. "But at least he is not dead, and while there is life there is hope! I am not a murderer, and there is a possibility of my making atonement! How I cling to that idea, Mantel! In a single hour I have enjoyed more happiness than I thought a whole lifetime could contain. But even in this indescribable happiness there is a strange element of unrest, for it seems too good to last. Is all great gladness haunted by this apprehension of evanescence? But at any rate, I am happy now!"

"And I am almost happy in your happiness," responded his friend, his face lighted up by an altogether new and beautiful smile.

"Sit down, then," said David, giving him a chair and standing opposite to him, "and I will tell you my story."

Words cannot describe the emotion, nay the passion, with which he poured that tragic narrative into the ears of his eager and sympathetic listener.

Never was a story told to a more attentive and appreciative auditor. There must have been some buried sorrow in that heart which had rendered it sensitive to the griefs of others. Hours were consumed by this narrative and by the questions which had to be asked and answered, and it was long after midnight when David found time to say, "And now shall I tell you my plans for the future?"

"Yes, if you will," said Mantel.

"Well, I have rented a sunny room in a lodging house in a quiet street, and to-morrow, if you are willing, you shall go and lead him to it. I must lean upon you, Mantel; I dare not make myself known to him. He would never accept my aid if he knew by whom it was bestowed, for he is proud and revengeful and would give himself no rest night or day until he had my life, if he knew I was within reach. I do not fear him; but what good could come of his wreaking vengeance on me, richly as I deserve it? It would only make his destiny more dark and dreadful, and defeat the one chance I have of making an atonement. You do not think I ought to make myself known, do you?"

"I do not. I think with you that an atonement is the most perfect satisfaction of justice."

"Thank you, thank you, my dear friend. You do not know how glad I am to have you think I am doing right. You will go to him to-morrow, then, and you will tell him that some one who has seen him on the streets has taken compassion on him. You will do this, will you not?"

"Nothing could give me greater pleasure. I half feel as if I had participated with you in the wrong done to the old man, and that I shall be blessed with you in trying to make it right."

"That is good in you, Mantel. How much nobility lies buried in every human heart! It may be that even such men as you and I are capable of some sort of rescue and redemption. I am going to spend my best strength in working for this poor old blind beggar whom I have wronged. I mean to toil for him like a galley slave, and mark me, Mantel, it is going to be honest toil!"

"Honest, did you say?" asked Mantel, lifting his eyebrows incredulously.

"Yes," David answered, "honest. This hope that has come to me has wrought a great change in my heart. It has revived old feelings which I thought long dead. If there is a God in heaven who has decided to give me one more chance to set myself right, I am going to take it! And listen; if this great hope can come to me, why not to you?"

Mantel leaned his head on his hand a moment, and then answered with a sigh, "Perhaps—but," and paused.

There are moments when these two indefinite words contain the whole of our philosophy of existence. "I am going to seek the great Perhaps!" said Rabelais, as he breathed his last.

David looked at him sympathetically and said, "Well, it is not strange that you cannot feel as I do. It is not by what befalls others, but by what befalls ourselves, that we learn to hope and trust."

The silence that came between them was broken by Mantel, who looked up at him with a trace of the old ironical smile on his face.

"Your plans are all right as far as they go, but it seems to me the hardest part of the tangle still remains to be unraveled."

"What do you mean?" asked David.

"What are you going to do about this beautiful Pepeeta?"

"Oh, I have settled that, too! You do not know how clearly I see it all. It is as if a fog had lifted from the ocean, and the sailor had found himself inside the harbor. I shall write and tell her all."

"Do you mean that you will tell her that her husband is alive?"

"I do."

"And perhaps you will advise her to return to him!"

"You are right, I shall."

Mantel shook his head.

"You do not think it best?" said David.

"I do not know."

"But there is nothing else to do."

"It is natural that I should see only the difficulties."

"What difficulties can there be?"

"Will you do anything more than destroy her by binding her once more to the man she loathes?"

"You do not know Pepeeta."

"It is true, I only know human nature."

"But she is more than human!"

"And are you?"

"Not I!"

"Then how will you endure to see her once more the wife of your enemy and rival?"

"Mantel," said David, pausing in his restless walk across the room, "I do not wonder that you ask this. It was the first question that I asked myself. It struck my heart like the blow of a hammer. But I have settled it. I have weighed the pains which I have suffered in a just and even balance. I know I cannot escape suffering, whichever way I turn. I have felt the pains of doing wrong, and I now deliberately choose the pains of doing right, let them be what they will!"

"It is easy to scorn the bitterness of an untasted cup."

"No matter! I have settled it. It must be done."

Mantel shrugged his shoulders and said, "I am afraid that the great Joker of whom we were talking yesterday is about to perpetrate another of his jests."

"You think it absurd, then?"

"I regard it as impossible."

"But why?"

"Because you are making a plan to act as if you were a disembodied conscience. You have forgotten that you still have the passions of a man. I fear there will be another tragedy as dark as the first. But if you are determined, I must obey you. I never know how to act for myself; but if some one wishes me to act for him I can do so without fear, even if I am compelled to do so without hope."

David resumed his walk for a moment, and then pausing again before his friend, said, "Mantel, a few years ago my soul was so sensitive to truth and duty that I was accustomed to regard its intuitions as the will of God revealed to me in some sort of supernatural way. I acted on the impulses of my heart without the slightest question or hesitation, and during that entire period of my life I cannot remember that I was ever for a single time seriously mistaken or misled. While I obeyed those intuitions and followed that mysterious light, I was happy. When I turned my back on that light it ceased to shine. It has been more than two years since I have thought I heard the voice of God or felt any assurance that I was in the path of duty. But now the departed vision has returned! I have had as clear a perception of my duty as was ever vouchsafed me in the old sweet days, and I shall obey it if it costs me my life."

So deep was his earnestness that Mantel seemed to catch his enthusiasm and be convinced. But in another instant the old mocking smile had returned.

"Would you be so tractable and obedient if the old beggar were in better health?" he said, opening and shutting the leaves of a book which was lying on the table, and looking out from under half-lifted eyelids.

At this insinuation David winced, and for a moment seemed about to resent it. But he restrained himself and replied gently, "The same distrust of my motives has arisen in my own mind. I more than half suspect that if, as you say, the old beggar were young and strong, my heart would fail me. But the knowledge that I could not do my duty if the doctor were going to live cannot be any reason for my not doing it when I believe that he is likely to die! I am not called upon to do wrong simply because I see that I am not wholly unselfish in doing right. I am not asked to face a supposition, but a fact. I shall not pride myself on any righteousness that I do not possess; but I must not be kept from doing my duty because I am not a perfect man."

"You are right," said Mantel, but his assent seemed more like a concession than a conviction. He had grown to regard the passing panorama of life as a great spectacular exhibition. The actors seemed swayed by powers external to themselves, their movements exhibiting such gross inconsistencies as to make it impossible to predict, and almost impossible to guess them. He looked on with more curiosity than interest, as at the different combinations in a kaleidoscope. He could not conceive that David, or any one, could so come under the dominant influence of a conviction as to act coherently and consistently upon it through any or all emergencies. But he was kind and sympathetic, and his heart responded to the passionate earnestness of his friend with a new interest and pleasure.

AS A TALE THAT IS TOLD

"First our pleasures die—and then
Our hopes and then our fears—and when
These are dead, the debt is due
Dust claims dust, and we die too."

—Shelley.

The next few weeks were passed by these two subdued and altered friends in devoted efforts to make the blind man comfortable and happy. True to his determination, David sought and found a place to work, and after reserving enough of his wages to supply the few necessities of his daily life, dedicated the rest to the purchase of comforts for the poor invalid.

Mantel acted as his almoner, and by his delicate tact and gentle manners persuaded the proud and revengeful old man to accept the mysterious charity. The moment the strain of perpetual beggary was taken from him, the physical ruin which the terrible blow of the stone, the subsequent illness, and the ensuing poverty and wretchedness had wrought, became manifest. He experienced a sudden relapse, and began to sink into an ominous decline.

Even had he not known the secret of his sorrow, it would have soon become plain to his acute and watchful nurse that some hidden trouble was gnawing at his heart, for he was taciturn, abstracted and sometimes morose. He manifested no curiosity as to the benefactor upon whose charity he was living, but received the alms bestowed by that unknown hand as children receive the gifts of God—unsolicited, uncomprehended and unobserved.

His mind, aroused by the conversation of his untiring nurse to the realities of the present existence, would sink back by a sort of irresistible gravity into the realm of memory. There, in the impenetrable privacy of his soul, he brooded over his wrongs and counted his prospects of righting them, as a miser reckons his coins.

The spasmodic workings of his countenance, the convulsive gripping of his hands, the grinding of his great white teeth, the scalding tears which sometimes fell from his sightless eyes, revealed to the mind of his patient and watchful observer the passions secretly and ceaselessly working in his soul.

Mantel became fascinated by the study of this subjective drama. He used to sit and watch the expressive curtain behind which these dark scenes were being enacted, and fancy that he could follow the soul as, in the spirit world, it tracked its foe, fell upon him and exacted its terrible revenge. At times he imagined that he could actually see the enraged thoughts issue from the body as if it were a den or cave, and they, living beasts of prey ranging abroad by day and night, and returning with their booty to devour it; or, if they had failed to take it, to brood over the failure of their hunt.

In all this time he asked for nothing, he complained of nothing, commented on nothing. Mantel would have concluded that his heart was dead had it not been for his pathetic demonstrations of affection for the little terrier who had so faithfully guided him from his lodging to the places where he sat and begged.

The dog reciprocated these attentions with a devotion and a gratitude which were human in their intensity and depth. It was as beautiful as it was pathetic, to see these two friends bestowing upon each other their few but expressive signs of love.

Not until many weeks had passed did Mantel succeed in really engaging his patient in anything like a conversation, and even after he had begun to thaw a little under those tactful ministrations of love, whenever the past was even hinted at the old recluse relapsed instantly into silence.

Mantel might have been discouraged had he not determined at all hazards to enter into the secrets of this life, and to pave the way for the forgiveness of his friend. He therefore persisted in his efforts, and one bright day when the invalid was feeling unusually strong ventured to press home his inquiries.

"I cannot help thinking," he said, "that you could soon be reasonably well again if you did not brood so much. I fear there is some trouble gnawing at your heart."

"There is," he was answered, icily.

"Have you wronged some one, then, and are these thoughts which vex you feelings of remorse and guilt?"

"Wronged some one!" the sick man fairly roared, gripping the arms of his chair and gasping for breath in the excitement which the question brought on. "Not I! I have been wronged! No one has ever b-b-been wronged as I have. I have nourished vipers in my b-b-bosom and been stung by them. I have sown love and reaped hate. I have been robbed, deceived and betrayed! My wife is gone! My health is gone! My sight is gone! He has skinned me like a sheep, c-c-curse him! My heart has turned to a hammer which knocks at my ribs and cries revenge! It ch-ch-chokes me!"

He gasped, grew purple in the face and clutched at his collar as if about to strangle. After a little the paroxysm passed away, and Mantel determined once more to try and assuage this implacable hatred.

To his own unbounded astonishment this young man who had long ago abandoned his faith in Christianity, began to plead like an apostle for the practice of its central and fundamental virtue.

"My friend," he said, with a new solemnity in his manner, "you are on the threshold of another world; how dare you present yourself to the Judge of all the earth with a passion like this in your heart?"

In the momentary rest the beggar had recovered strength enough to reply: "It is t-t-true. I am on the threshold of another world! I didn't use to b-b-believe there was one, but I do now. There must be! Would it b-b-be right for such d-d-devils as the one that wrecked my life to g-g-go unpunished? Not if I know anything! They get away from us here, but if eternity is as long as they s-s-say it is, I'll find D-D-Dave Corson if it t-t-takes the whole of it, and when I f-f-find him—" he paused again, gasping and strangling.

Mantel's pity was deeply stirred, and he would gladly have spared him had he dared; but he did not, and permitting him to regain his breath, he said:

"And so you really mean to die without bestowing your pardon upon those who have wronged you?"

"I swear it!"

"Have you ever heard the story of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ?" asked Mantel, trembling at the name and at his own temerity in pronouncing it.

It was a strange situation into which this young skeptic had been forced by the logic of circumstances. As the old beggar felt the ethical necessity of another life, the young gambler felt the ethical necessity of the crucifixion. It seemed to him that if the redemption of this hate-smitten man hung on the capacity of his own heart to empty itself of its bitterness, there was about as much hope as of a serpent expelling the poison from its fangs! He had never before seen a man under the absolute and unresisted power of one of the basal passions, and neither he nor any one else has ever understood life until he has witnessed that fearful spectacle. A summer breeze conveys no more idea of a tornado, nor a burning chimney of a volcano, than ordinary vices convey of that fearful ruin which any elemental passion works when permitted to devastate a soul, unrestrained. The sight filled Mantel with terror, and he felt himself compelled by some invincible necessity to plead with the man in the name of the Saviour of the world. Long and earnestly he besought him to forgive as Christ forgave; but all in vain! So long had he brooded over his wrongs that his mind had either become hopelessly impotent or else irretrievably hardened. The conversation had so angered and exhausted the invalid that he presently crawled over to his bed, threw himself upon it and sank almost instantly into a deep sleep.

With a heavy heart, Mantel left him and hurried home to report the interview to David. He found him just returning from his work, and conveyed his message by the gloom of his countenance.

"Has anything, gone wrong?" David inquired, anxiously, as they entered their room.

Casting himself heavily into a seat and answering abstractedly, Mantel replied, "Each new day of life renders it more inexplicable. A man no sooner forms a theory than he is compelled to abandon it. I fear it is a labyrinth from which we shall none of us escape."

"Do not speak in parables," David exclaimed, impatiently, "If anything is the matter, tell me at once. Do not leave me in suspense. I cannot endure it. Is he worse? Is he dying?"

"He is both, and more," Mantel answered, still unable to escape from the gloom which enveloped him.

"More? What more? Speak out. I cannot bear these indirections."

"I have at last drawn from him a brief but terrible allusion to the tragedy of your lives."

"What did he say? Quick, tell me!"

"He said that he had been wronged by those whom he had benefited."

"It is too true, God knows; but what else did he say?"

"That he would spend eternity in revenging his wrongs."

"Horrible!" cried David, sinking into a chair.

"Yes, more horrible than you know."

"Did he show no mercy? Was there no sign of pardon?"

"None! Granite is softer than his heart. Ice is warmer."

David rose and paced the floor. Pausing before Mantel, he said, piteously, "Perhaps he will relent when Pepeeta comes!"

"Perhaps! Have you heard from her?"

"No, but her answer cannot be much longer delayed, for I have written again and again."

"Something may have happened," said Mantel, who had lost all heart and hope.

"Do not say it," David exclaimed, beseechingly.

"Well, but why does she not reply?"

"It is a long distance. She may have changed her residence. She may never go to the postoffice. She may be sick."

"Or dead!" said Mantel, giving expression in two words to the fullness of his despair.

"Impossible!" exclaimed David, his face blanching at this sudden articulation of the dread he had been struggling so hard to repress.

"You do not know her!" he continued. "If you had ever seen her, you could not speak of death. She was not made to die. I beg you to abandon this mood. You will drive me to despair. I cannot live another moment without the hope that I shall be forgiven by this old man whom I have so terribly wronged, and I know that he will not forgive me unless I put back into his hands the treasure of which I robbed him."

"Corson," said Mantel, rising and taking David by the hand, "you must give up this dream of receiving the old man's pardon."

"I cannot!"

"You must! He will not grant it even if Pepeeta comes. The knife has gone too deep! His heart is broken, and his mind, I think, is deranged. And more than this, he will not live until Pepeeta comes unless she hastens on the wings of the wind. He is dying, Corson, dying. You cannot imagine how he has withered away since you saw him. It is like watching a candle flicker in its socket. You must abandon this hope, I say."

"And I say that it is impossible."

"But you must. What difference can it possibly make whether he forgives you or not? The wrong is done. It cannot be undone."

"What difference? What difference, did you say? Is it possible that you do not know? Do you think a man could endure this life, hard enough at the best, if he were haunted by a dead man's curse?"

"Thousands have had to do so—millions; but do not let us talk about it any more. We are nervous and unstrung. You will never be persuaded until you see for yourself. If you wish to make the effort, you must do it soon; in fact you must do it now. I have come to tell you that his physician says he will not live until morning."

"Then let us go!" cried David, seizing his hat and starting for the door, white to the lips and trembling violently.

They passed out into the night together and hurried away to the beggar's room. Each was too burdened for talk and they walked in silence. Arriving at the house, they ascended the stairs on tiptoe and paused to listen at the door. "I will leave it ajar, so you may hear what he says, and then you can judge if I am right," said Mantel, entering quietly.

He approached the table and turned up the lamp which he had left burning dimly. By its pale light David could see the great head lying on the pillow, the chin elevated, the mouth partially open, the breast heaving with the painful efforts to catch a few last fluttering inspirations.

Nestling close to the ashen face and licking the cheek now and then with his little red tongue, was the terrier.

Mantel's footfall, quiet as it was, disturbed the sleeper, who moved, turned his head toward the sound and asked in a husky and but half-audible voice, "Who is there?"

"It is I. How are you now? A little better?" said Mantel, laying his soft, cool hand upon the broad forehead, wet already with the death-damp.

"I am getting weaker. It won't—last—long," he answered painfully.

"Do you think so?"

"I know it."

"Are you satisfied?"

"It can't—be—helped."

"No, it can't be helped. The doctor has told me you cannot live through the night."

"The—sooner—the—better!"

"I do not want to bother you, but I cannot bear to have you die without talking to you again about your future; I must try once more to persuade you not to die without sending some kind word to the people who have wronged you."

The expression of the white face underwent a hideous transformation.

"If you do not feel like talking to me about a matter so sacred and personal, would you not like to have me send for some minister or priest?"

The head moved slowly back and forth in a firm negation.

"In every age, and among all men, it has seemed fitting that those who were about to die should make some preparation to meet their God. Have you no desire to do this?"

A fierce light shone upon the emaciated countenance and the thin lips slowly articulated these words: "I—myself—will—settle—with—God! He—will—have—to—account—to—me—for—all—he—has—made—me—suffer!"

The listener at the door leaned against the wall for support.

"Is there absolutely no word of pardon or of kindness which you wish to send to those who have injured you, as a sort of legacy from the grave?"

"None!" he whispered fiercely.

"Suppose that your enemy should come to see you. Suppose that a great change had come over him; that he, too, had suffered deeply; that your wife had discovered his treachery and left him; that he had bitterly repented; that he had made such atonement as he could for his sin; that it was he who has been caring for you in these last hours, could you not pardon him?"

These words produced an extraordinary effect on the dying man. For the first time he identified his enemy with his friend, and as the discovery dawned upon his mind a convulsion seized and shook his frame. He slowly and painfully struggled to a sitting posture, lifted his right hand above his head and said in tones that rang with the raucous power of by-gone days:

"Curse him! If I had known that I was eating his b-b-bread, it would have choked me! Send him to me! Where is he?"

"I am here," said David, quietly entering the door. "I am here to throw myself on your mercy and to beg you, for the love of God, to forgive me."

As he heard the familiar voice, the beggar trembled. He made one last supreme effort to look out of his darkened eyes. An expression of despairing agony followed the attempt, and then, with both his great bony hands, he clutched at the throat of his night robe as if choking for breath, tore it open and reaching down into his bosom felt for some concealed object. He found it at last, grasped it and drew it forth. It was a shining blade of steel.

Mantel sprang to take it from his hand; but David pushed him back and said calmly, "Let him alone."

"Yes, let me alone," cried the blind man, trembling in every limb, and crawling slowly and painfully from the bed.

The movements of the dying man were too slow and weak to convey any adequate expression of the tempest raging in his soul. It was incredible that a tragedy was really being enacted, and that this poor trembling creature was thirsting for the lifeblood of a mortal foe.

David did not seek to escape. He did not even shudder. There was a singular expression of repose on his features, for in his desperation he solaced himself by the reflection that he was about to render final satisfaction for a sin whose atonement had become otherwise impossible. He therefore folded his arms across his breast and stood waiting.

The contorted face of the furious beggar afforded a terrible contrast to the tranquil countenance of the penitent and unresisting object of his hatred. The opaque flesh seemed to have become transparent, and through it glowed the baleful light of hatred and revenge. The lips were drawn back from the white teeth, above which the great mustache bristled savagely. The lids were lifted from the hollow and expressionless eyes. Balancing himself for an instant he moved forward; but the emaciated limbs tottered under the weight of the body. He reeled, caught himself, then reeled once more, and lunged forward in the direction from which he had heard the voice of his enemy.

Again Mantel strove to intercept him, and again David forced him back.

Uncertain as to the exact location of the object of his hatred, he raised his knife and struck at random; but the blow spent itself in air.

The futility and helplessness of his efforts crazed him.

"Where are you? G-g-give me some sign!" he cried.

"I am here," said David in a voice whose preternatural calmness sent a shudder to the heart of his friend.

With one supreme and final effort, the dying man lurched forward and threw himself wildly toward the sound. His hand, brandishing the dagger, was uplifted and seemed about to descend on his foe; but at that very instant, with a frightful imprecation upon his lips, the gigantic form collapsed, the knife dropped from the hand, and he plunged, a corpse, into the arms of his intended victim.

David received the dead weight upon the bosom at which the dagger had been aimed, and the first expression of his face indicated a certain disappointment that a single blow had not been permitted to end his troubles, as well as terror at an event so appalling. He stood spellbound for a moment, supporting the awful burden, and then, overpowered with the horror of the situation, cried out,

"Take him, Mantel! take him! Help me to lay him down! Quick, I cannot stand it; quick!"

They laid the lifeless form on the bed, while the little dog, leaping up beside his dead master, threw his head back and emitted a series of prolonged and melancholy howls.

OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEATH

"Men deal with life as children with their play,
Who first misuse, then cast their toys away."
—Cowper.

Bewildered by the scene through which he had just passed, Corson returned to his rooms and spent the night in a sort of stupor. What happened the next day he never knew; but on the following morning he accompanied Mantel to the cemetery where, with simple but reverent ceremony, they committed the body of the doctor to the bosom of earth.

Just as they were about to turn away, after the conclusion of the burial service, a strange thing happened. The limb of a great elm tree, which had been tied back to keep it out of the way of the workmen, was released by the old sexton and swept back over the grave.

It produced a similar impression upon the minds of both the subdued spectators. They glanced at each other, and Mantel said, "It was like the wing of an angel!"

"Yes," added David with a sigh, "and seemed to brush away and obliterate all traces of his sorrow and his sins."

They did not speak during their homeward journey, and when they reached their rooms David paced uneasily backward and forward until the shadows of evening had fallen. When he suddenly observed that it was dusk, he took his hat and went out into the streets. There was something so restless and unnatural about his movements as to excite the suspicion of his friend, who waited for a single moment and then hurried after him.

The night was calm and clear, the autumn stars were shining in a cloudless sky, and the tide of life which had surged through the busy streets all day was ebbing like the waters from the bays and estuaries along the shore of the ocean.

The sounds the people made in tramping over the stone pavements or hurriedly driving over the hard streets, possessed a strangely different quality from the monotonous and grinding roar of the daylight. They were sharp, clear, resonant and emphatic. A single footfall attracted the attention of a listener more than the previous shuffle of a thousand feet. David's,—soft and subdued as it was,—resounded loudly, echoing from the buildings on either side of him as he slowly paced along.

It was evident to every one who met him that he was moving aimlessly. Now and then some keen-eyed pedestrian stopped to take a second look and, turning to do so, felt an instinctive pity for this burdened, care-encumbered man, wending his way through the almost deserted streets.

This gaze was unreturned and this sympathy unperceived. He was in one of those fits of abstraction when the whole external universe with all its beauties and sublimities has ceased to exist. His cup of misery was full, he had lost all clue to the meaning of life and a single definite idea had taken complete possession of his mind. It was that he was doomed to pass his existence under a curse.

By the very nature of its being, the soul is keenly sensitive to blessings and curses, and it is not alone the benediction of the mitred priest that thrills the heart! That of the pauper upon whom we have bestowed alms sometimes awakens in our bosom a hope and gladness out of all proportion to the insignificant source from which it has proceeded. Nor do we need to be cursed by the great and the powerful to feel a pang of terror in our souls! Let but some helpless wretch whom we have wronged commit his cause to heaven in a single syllable, and we shudder as if we already heard the approach of those avenging feet which the ancients said were shod with wool. The curse of the dead and impotent beggar rang in the ears of the fugitive like the strokes of an alarm bell. That deep sense of justice which had been formed in his early life had been revivified and endowed with a resistless power.

At such moments as these through which he was passing man experiences no doubt as to the nature and origin of conscience. He is as sure that the terror aroused in his heart is the echo of the decision of some real and awful tribunal as that the wave upon the shore is produced by some real though invisible storm at sea, or the shadow on the mountain by some palpable object between it and the sun.

The conscience is not only "a secretion in the brain," it is not only the "accumulated observations of the universal man upon the phenomena of the moral life," it is not only his study of the laws of cause and effect distilled into maxims and forebodings; it is this, but it is more than this—as every total is more than any of its parts. For every man has something which is in him, but not of him. It resides within his intelligence, but it is not so much the offspring of his intelligence as an emissary that has taken up its residence there! This obscure something is stronger than he. He does not subordinate it to himself, but is subordinated by it. He can rebel against it, but he cannot overthrow it. He can fly from it, but he cannot escape it.

This sublime and mysterious power had at last obtained complete ascendency in the soul of David Corson. He no longer argued and he no longer resisted. He saw no way of escape from the spiritual anaconda which was tightening its folds around him.

This was all the more strange because the way to the satisfaction of the irrepressible hunger of his heart was now open. Pepeeta's husband was dead, and although he was not innocent of a great crime, he was at least not a murderer. Pepeeta still loved him, if she were still alive. Of this he had no more doubt than of his love for her. Why then did he thus give up to despair? Why did he not fly to her arms and claim from life that happiness which had hitherto escaped his grasp?

He did not try to solve these problems, nor to comprehend his own despair. He only knew that he had been baffled at every turn of his life by powers with which he was unable to cope, and that he was tired of the struggle. He would give himself up to the mighty stream of events and be borne along. If he was exercising any volition in the choice of the path he was following, he was doing it unconsciously. That path was leading him direct to the harbor. It was a pathway well-worn by tired feet like his own.

The miserable creatures who had preceded him seemed to have formed a sort of wake by which he was being drawn along to that "wandering grave" in the deep sea. At last he reached the water's edge, and started as he heard the waves splashing among the wooden piles. The soft, sibilant sounds seemed like kisses on the lips of the victims of their treacherous caresses.

The deed of which they whispered seemed but the logical conclusion of his entire career. He put his foot upon the edge of the wharf and looked down into the dark abyss.

It was at this critical instant that his faithful friend extended his hand to save him; but at the same instant another and mightier hand was also extended from the sky.

From a remote part of the Battery a sound cut the silent air. It was a human voice, masculine, powerful, tender and pleading, lifted in a sacred song. That sound was the first element of the objective world which had penetrated the consciousness of the tortured and desperate would-be suicide.

He turned and listened—and as he did so, Mantel sprang back among the shadows just in time to escape his observation. The full-throated music, floating on the motionless air, fell upon his ear like a benediction. He listened, and caught the words of a hymn with which he had been familiar in his childhood:

"Light of those whose dreary dwelling
Borders on the shades of death!
Rise on us, thy love revealing,
Dissipate the clouds beneath.
Thou of heaven and earth creator—
In our deepest darkness rise,
Scattering all the night of nature,
Pouring day upon our eyes."

By the spell of this mysterious music he was drawn back into the living world—drawn as if by some powerful magnet.

Pain and sorrow had become tired of vexing him at last, and now stretched forth their hands in a ministry of consolation. With his eyes fixed on the spot from which the music issued, he moved unconsciously toward it, Mantel following him.

A few moments' walking brought him to a weird spectacle. A torch had been erected above a low platform on which stood a man of most unique and striking personality. He looked like a giant in the wavering light of the torch. He was dressed in the simple garb of a Quaker; his head was bare; great locks of reddish hair curled round his temples and fell down upon his shoulders. His massive countenance bespoke an extraordinary mind, and beamed with rest and peace.

As he sang the old familiar hymn, he looked around upon his audience with an expression such as glowed, no doubt, from the countenance of the Christ when He spoke to the multitudes on the shores of Lake Genessaret.

Close to the small platform was a circle of street Arabs, awed into silence and respect by the charm of this remarkable personality. Next to them came a ring of women—some of them old and gray, with haggard and wrinkled countenances upon which Time, with his antique pen, had traced many illegible hieroglyphs; some of them young and bedizened with tinsel jewelry and flashy clothing; not a few of them middle-aged, wan, dispirited and bearing upon their hips bundles wrapped in faded shawls, from which came occasionally that most distressing of sounds, the wail of an ill-fed and unloved infant, crying in the night.

Outside of this zone of female misery and degradation, there was a belt of masculine stupidity and crime; men with corpulent bodies, bull necks, double chins, pile-driving heads; men of shrunken frames, cadaverous cheeks, deep-set and beady eyes—vermin-covered, disease-devoured, hope-deserted. They clung around him, these concentric circles of humanity, like rings around a luminous planet, held by they knew not what resistless attraction.

The simple melody, borne upon the pinions of that resonant and cello-like voice, attained an almost supernatural influence over their perverted natures. When it ceased, an audible sigh arose, an involuntary tribute of adoration and of awe.

As soon as he had finished his hymn, this consecrated apostle to the lost sheep of the great city opened a well-worn volume.

The passage which he read, or rather chanted, was the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, the awe-inspiring sentences sending through the circles of humanity which were tightening about him visible vibrations.

When he finished his reading, he began an address full of homely wit and pathos, in which, with all the rich and striking imagery culled from a varied life in the wildernesses of the great forests and the great cities of our continent, he appealed to that consciousness of "the true, the beautiful and the good" which he believed to lie dormant, but capable of resurrection, in the soul of every man.

A few of his auditors were too far gone with fatigue or intoxication to follow him, and elbowing their way through the crowd shot off into the night upon their various tangents of stupidity or crime; but most of the spectators listened with a sort of rapt and involuntary attention.

The influence which he exerted over the mind of the young man whom he had unconsciously saved from suicide was as irresistible as it was inscrutable. His language had the charm of perfect familiarity. Every word and phrase had fallen from his own lips a hundred times in similar exhortations. In fact, they seemed to him strangely like the echo of his own voice coming back upon him from the dim and half-forgotten past.

His interest and excitement culminated in an incident for which the listener was totally unprepared. The speaker who had been exhorting his audience upon the testimony of prophet and apostle now appealed to his own personal experience.

"Look at me!" he said, laying his great hand on his broad chest. "I was once as hardened and desperate a man as any of you; but God saved me! See this book!" he added, holding up the old volume. "I will tell you a story about it. I found it in a log cabin away out in the frontier state of Ohio. Listen, and I will tell you how. I had left a lumber camp with a company of frontiersmen one Sunday morning, to go to a new clearing which 'we were making in the wilderness, when I suddenly discovered that I had forgotten my axe. Swearing at my misfortune, I returned to get it. As I approached the cabin which I had left a few minutes before, I heard a human voice. I paused in surprise, crept quietly to the door and listened. Some one was talking in almost the very language in which I have spoken to you. I was frightened and fled! Escaping into the depths of the forest, I lay down at the root of a great tree, and for the first time in my life I made a silence in my soul and listened to the voice of God. I know not how long I lay there; but at last when I recovered my consciousness I returned to the cabin. It was silent and empty; but on the floor I found this book."

"Good God!" exclaimed a voice.

So rapt had been the attention of the hearers that at this unexpected interruption the women screamed and the men made a wide path for the figure that burst through them and rushed toward the platform.

The speaker paused and fixed his eye upon the man who pressed eagerly toward him.

"Tell me whether a red line is drawn down the edge of that chapter, and a hand is pointing toward the fifth and sixth verses!" he cried.

"It is," replied the lumberman.

"Then let me take it!" exclaimed David, reaching out his trembling hands.

"What for?"

"Because it is mine! I am the man who proclaimed the holy faith, and, God forgive me, abandoned it even as you received it!"

The astonished lumberman handed him the Bible, and he covered it with kisses and tears. In the meantime, the crowd, excited by the spectacular elements of the drama, surged round the actors, and the preacher, reaching down, took David by the arm and raised him to the platform.

"Be quiet, my friends," he said with a gesture of command, "and when this prodigal has regained his composure we will ask him to tell us his story."

Of what was transpiring around him, David seemed to be entirely unconscious and at last the fickle crowd became impatient.

"What's de matter wid you?" said a sarcastic voice.

"Speak out! Don't snuffle," exclaimed another.

"Tip us your tale," cried a fourth.

"Go on. Go on. We're waiting," called many more.

These impatient cries at last aroused David from his waking dream, he drew his hand over his eyes, and began his story.

For a time the strange narrative produced a profound impression. Heads drooped as if in meditation upon the mystery and meaning of life; significant glances were exchanged; tears trembled in many eyes; these torpid natures received a shock which for a moment awakened them to a new life.

But it was only for a moment. They were incapable of the sustained effort of thought, of ambition, or of will. Impressions made upon their souls were like those made on the soft folds of a garment by the passing touch of a hand.

To their besotted perceptions this scene was like a play in a Bowery theater, and now that the dramatic denouement had come, they lost their interest and sauntered away singly or in little groups. In a few moments there were only three figures left in the light of the flaming torch, They were those of the lumberman, David, and Mantel, who now drew near, took his friend by the hand and pressed it with a gentle sympathy.

"Where did you come from?" asked David in surprise, as he for the first time recognized his companion.

"I have followed you all the evening," Mantel replied.

"Then you have heard the story of this book?"

"I have, and I could not have believed it without hearing."

"Can you spare us a little of your time?" said David, turning to the lumberman.

"I owe you all the time you wish and all the service I can render," he replied.

"You have more than paid your debt by what you have done for me to-night, but who are you?"

"I am only another voice crying in the wilderness."

"Is this your only business in life—to speak to the outcast and the wretched as you did to-night?"

"This is all."

David looked his admiration.

"How do you support yourself?" asked Mantel, to whom such a man was a phenomenon.

"We do not any of us support ourselves so much as we are supported," he replied.

"And this life of toil and self-denial had its origin in those words I spoke in the empty lumber camp?" asked David, incredulously.

"It is not a life of self-denial, but that was its beginning."

"It is a mystery. I lost my faith and you found it, and now perhaps you are going to give it back again!" David said.

The lumberman turned his searching eyes kindly on Mantel's face and said, "And how is it with thee, my friend; hast thou the peace of God?"

The directness of the question startled the gambler. "I have, no peace of any kind; my heart is full of storms and my life is a ruin," he answered sadly.

"Did thee never notice," said the lumberman gently, "how nature loves to reclaim a ruin?"

"In what way?"

"By covering it with vines and moss."

The unexpected nature of this answer and the implied encouragement produced a deep impression on the mind of the gambler, but he answered:

"I shall never be reclaimed. I have gone too far. I have often tried to find the true way of life, and prayed for a single glimpse of light! Have you ever heard how Zeyd used to spend hours leaning against the wall of the Kaaba and praying, 'Lord, if I knew in what manner thou wouldst have me adore thee, I would obey thee; but I do not! Oh! give me light!' I have prayed that prayer with all that agony, but, to me, the universe is dark as hell!"

"There is light enough! It is eyes we need!" said the evangelist.

"Light! Who has it? Many think they have, but it is mere fancy. They mistake the shining of rotten wood for fire!"

"And sometimes men have walked in the light without seeing it, as fish swimming in the sea and birds flying in the air, might say, 'Where is the sea?' 'Where is the air?'"

"But what comfort is it, if there is light, and I cannot see it? There might as well be no light at all!"

"The bird never knows it has wings until it tries them! We see, not by looking for our eyes, but by looking out of them. We say of a little child that it has to 'find its legs.' Some men have to find their eyes."

"It is an art, then, to see?"

"I would even call it a trick, if I dared."

"Can you impart that capacity and teach that art?"

"No, it must be acquired by each man for himself. We can only tell others 'we see.'"

"I only know that I wish I could see!"

"We see by faith."

"And what is faith?"

"It is a power of the soul as much higher than reason as reason is higher than sense."

"Some men may possess such power, but I do not."

"You at least have an imagination."

"Yes."

"Well, faith is but the imagination spiritualized."

Mantel regarded the man who spoke in these terse and pregnant sentences with astonishment. "This," said he, "is not the same language in which you addressed the people in the Battery. This is the language of a philosopher! Do all lumbermen in the west speak thus?"

The evangelist began to reply, but was interrupted by David, who now burst out in a sudden exclamation of joy and gratitude. He had been too busy with reflections and memories to participate actively in the conversation, for this startling incident had disclosed to him the whole slow and hidden movement of the providence of his life towards this climax and opportunity. He was profoundly moved by a clear conviction that a divine hand must have planned and superintended this whole web of events, and had intentionally led him from contemplating the tragic issue of his sinful deeds and desires, to this vision of the good he had done in the better moments of his life. This strange coincidence, to a mind like his, could leave no room for doubt that the hand of God was on him, and that, after all, he had been neither abandoned nor forgotten. The lumberman had been sent at this critical moment to save him! There was still hope!

With that instantaneous movement in which his disordered conceptions of life invariably re-formed themselves, the chaotic events of the past shifted themselves into a purposeful and comprehensible series, and revealed beyond peradventure the hand of God.

And as this conclusion burst upon him, he broke into the conversation of Mantel and the lumberman with the warmest exclamations of gratitude and happiness.

They talked a long time in the quiet night, asking and answering questions. The two friends besought the evangelist to accompany them to their rooms, but he said:

"I have given you my message and must pass on. My work is to bear testimony. I sow the seed and leave its cultivation and the harvest to others."

THE GREAT REFUSAL