se, Selwyn, if you come out of this alive, that you'll fight his
case for him.'

Selwyn murmured assent, but he was trying to shake off a haunting feeling
that was enveloping him like a mist--a feeling that everything the young
Englishman was saying he had heard before. It left him dazed, and made
Durwent's voice sound far away. He tried to dismiss it as an illogical
prank of the mind, but the thing was relentless. He could not rid
himself of the thought that sometime in the past--months, years, perhaps
centuries ago--this pitiful scene had been enacted before.

It chilled his soul with its presage of disaster. He saw the hand of
destiny, and everything in him rebelled against the inexorable cruelty of
it all. It was infamous that any life should be dominated by a whim of
the Fates; that any creature should enter this world with a silken cord
about his throat. Destiny. Does it mould our lives; or do our lives,
inundated with the forces of heredity, mould our destinies? He tried to
grapple with the thought; but through the pain and confusion of his mind
he could only feel the presence of unseen fingers spelling out the words
written in a hidden past.

'I wonder,' said Durwent, after a pause of several minutes, during which
neither had spoken, 'what happens when this is finished.'

'Do you mean--after death?' said Selwyn, forcing his mind clear of its
clouds.

Durwent nodded and leaned wearily with his arms on the bank. 'I tried to
think it out the night before I was to be shot,' he said. 'I can't just
say what I did think--but I know there's something after this world.
Selwyn, is there a God? I wonder if there will be another chance for the
men who have made a mess of things here.'

The American turned towards the young fellow, whose pale face looked
singularly boyish, and had a wistfulness that touched him to his very
heart. Durwent was gazing over the grass into the distance, oblivious of
everything about him, and in the blue of his eyes, which borrowed lustre
from the morning, there was the mysticism of one who is searching for the
land which lies beyond this life's horizon.

'I wonder,' repeated Durwent dreamily.

Selwyn tried to frame words for a reply, but skilled as he was in the
interpretation of thought, he was dumb in confession of his faith. He
longed to speak the things which might have brought comfort to the lad's
harassed soul, but everything which came to him, echoing from his former