ribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fervently praying.
His whispering mingled with the rustle of the palm-leaves, while the bar
of sunlight crept up the body. In the boy's smile had been the whole of
stoic doubt, of stoic acquiescence. It had met him with an unconscious
challenge; had seemed to know so much. Pierson took his hand, which lay
outside the sheet. The boy's lips moved, as though in thanks; he drew a
long feeble breath, as if to suck in the thread of sunlight; and his eyes
closed. Pierson bent over the hand. When he looked up the boy was dead.
He kissed his forehead and went quietly out.

The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a hillock beyond
the track on the desert's edge, and stood looking at the afterglow. The
sun and the boy--together they had gone West, into that wide glowing
nothingness.

The muezzin call to sunset prayer in the Arab village came to him clear
and sharp, while he sat there, unutterably lonely. Why had that smile so
moved him? Other death smiles had been like this evening smile on the
desert hills--a glowing peace, a promise of heaven. But the boy's smile
had said: 'Waste no breath on me--you cannot help. Who knows--who knows?
I have no hope, no faith; but I am adventuring. Good-bye!' Poor boy!
He had braved all things, and moved out uncertain, yet undaunted! Was
that, then, the uttermost truth, was faith a smaller thing? But from
that strange notion he. recoiled with horror. 'In faith I have lived, in
faith I will die!' he thought, 'God helping me!' And the breeze,
ruffling the desert sand, blew the grains against the palms of his hands,
outstretched above the warm earth.

THE END.

THE ISLAND PHARISEES

By John Galsworthy

"But this is a worshipful society"
KING JOHN

PREFACE

Each man born into the world is born like Shelton in this book--to go a
journey, and for the most part he is born on the high road. At first he
sits there in the dust, with his little chubby hands reaching at nothing,
and his little solemn eyes staring into space. As soon as he can toddle,
he moves, by the queer instinct we call the love of life, straight along
this road, looking neither to the right nor left, so pleased is he to
walk. And he is charmed with everything--with the nice flat road, all
broad and white, with his own feet, and with the prospect he can see on
either hand. The