mongst the broken-down poor of
Whitmansworth Union?

He stopped the car near a little bridge where a thin brooklet made a
noisy chatter, and sat still, his chin on his hand, thinking deeply.

This was the spot for which he had raced all these hours, for here he
and she had rested that terrible night to gather strength for the last
mile that lay between the woman and rest.

* * * * *

"It's better to be tired and hungry oneself, Jim, than to make other
people so. Don't forget that."

"I am not really tired," the child maintained stoutly, "but it's going
to rain again. Can't you come on?"

"Presently."

"You think it is the right road?"

"I don't know, Jim. I was sure of it at first, but I'm sure of nothing
now."

* * * * *

The words and scene were as clear to him as the day they happened. He
saw in it now a deeper significance, a possible meaning that was the
last note of tragedy to his mother's story. For that note is reached
only when the faith in which we have lived, acted and endured, fails
us. That is the bitterness and foretaste of death. Then only can the
shadow of it fall on us, and in great mercy gather us into its shade.

The Right Road! There was no doubt or shadow for Christopher yet. He
had taken the first step on the Road he had chosen, and he would not
look back. He would not stultify his mother's sacrifice. Such faint
echoes as he heard calling him back were temptations to which he must
turn a deaf ear. He would go forward on his chosen path, and Peter
Masters' millions must look after themselves.

That was the final decision. Yet he sat there, still figuring the
persons of the woman and the child trudging down the road towards
him, and as he gazed, without conscious effort, the forms changed. The
boy grew to manhood: the woman took to herself youth, youth with a
crown of golden hair and the form of Patricia.

A throb of exultation leapt through him. Here were the real riches and
fulness of life within his grasp and he, in blunt stupidity, had not
chosen to see, had set material good and vague uncertainties before
his own incomparable gain and happiness. Whatever had held him back
before, the clouded life or personal ambition, or Caesar's need, it was
swept away now like some low-lying mist before the wind, and left the
clear vision, the man and the woman together on the long, smooth Road
he would lay for