The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1913-02-21

amen f~H fou anal Will have to discuss
the matter of payment"
He caught the other by the shoul-
ders, peered closely into his face and.
laughing harshly, turned away.
Through a night that seemed endless
man fought battle old as sin itself
He had sought the solitude of the fields
in q blind vain wish to escape the
issue and the thing that filed his eyes.
He had come so near to greatness.
And now, at an hour when he seemed
most to need stimulus and support, he
was brought face to face with the
temptation to desert. 1t was one thing
in a moment of disheartenment to cry,
as he had cried to himself. "I have
come to the end 1t was far different
when opportunity had come to revive
a sinking cause to stay his hand. He
knew he had but to reach out to dis
close. not an EXcalibur rising out of
| the waters to lend invincibility to
him who would WELD it, but a new
prod for a calloused people, one fact
the more to add to the knowledge,
whose cumulative power in the end
would-must-carry the people for.
ward, upward.
1t was Hampden, Katherine and
John Dunmeade against the people.
And what did he owe the people, the
calloused fools whose Knowledge, if
not complete, was yet full enough to
show them whittier they were going
and whittier they must turn, but who
trudged contentedly on, Indifferent to
all but the present profit, thinking
only of self, repudiating and sneering
at those who offered honest service
and counsel? The balance was all
against them and in his favor Let
some one else now take up the task
to which John Dunmeade had been
unequal!
He saw Stephen Hampden covering,
suddenly broken, fear palsied man,
before the death agony, looking with
kind of wistfulness on the dying
mans face, as though in Warren
Blake's example he saw a way out of
the tangle. A troop of miserable, pitt
able figures marched before him-Slay-
ton, Brown, Parsons, Sheehan, Blake
men whom he had punished, whose
lives he had shattered or taken in his
crusade-to what end? Their places
had been taken by other men of like
kind, the world no better, no wiser
so far as he could see. Behind the
troop marched a regiment of men and
women, his neighbors, whose little
savings would be lost, did the bank
fail through his disclosures, but might
be preserved if Murchell's promise to
intervene was kept. Was there not
more virtue in mercy than in punish
ment?
For long. in the fear of the man who
knows himself weakening, he refused
to face the crucial fact. But he had
to come to ito her-at last. He
saw her as he had last seen her. the
rose in bloom, a strong woman re
fined and softened by some heart pro
cess of which he knew nothing. If he
went forward he must cloud the splen
dor and beauty of her wOmanhOod
with disgrace and suffering. He re
volted against the thought-why mus
|
made to suffer the penalty that Others
had earned? Could he strike the blow
1t made no difference that she hat
fouted him for unworthy things. A.
once before nothing that she coult
say had added to the temptation tha
lay in her very existence, so now moth
ing that she had done could take from
the fact of his love. For it lived. HI
could find through the years in unceas
ing work an anodyne to deaden th'
ache but on this Mount Olivet it live'
again, a throbbing passion that sub
merged all things else. He had no
the strength of God, he told himself
He could not be so merciless to her
TO himself.
He fed homeward in the waning ligh
, and prayed feverishly for daylight.
, BY his window, as once he ha'
watched a dawn of promise, he saw
come but without promise. At last
2 the battle ended, too tired to seek hi
, bed he fell asleep in the chair.