very whole of his
wrong-doing, to leave hidden no single meanness or small-souled
thought. It was as though, in the clean night air, in the face of two
just and clear-seeing companions, he wished to cast aside all the
wrong of the past before making a new beginning.

"I am going away," he said. "It isn't because I found that my plan
didn't pay as I had hoped it would. It is because I was happier back
there in the West, serving out a sentence at hard labor, learning to
live by the work of my hands rather than by my dishonorable wits. I
can look back over my life and see just where my honesty began to
waver, just when I first compromised with my own conscience and
persuaded myself that something was fair and honest when I knew it was
not. We had all the same chance, Jasper and Tom and I; look at them
and look at me. You may wonder why I say all this to you. Perhaps it
is because you alone saw through me, dared to tell me that I had no
confidence even in my own claims, called me a man of straw and a bogy.
Well, after to-night I am going back, to be a real man again."

For the first time Oliver slackened the speed of the car and nearly
stopped in the road.

"Do you want to go now?" he inquired shortly. "We can take you to the
station if you do. They don't need us down there, as they do the
others."

"No, not now. I must know what my criminal bungling has amounted to,
first. When I have seen the flood go down, then it will be time to go.
I want to see this thing through."

They had straightened out into the level road and were forced to drive
more slowly, for the highway was no longer empty. A big tractor was
lumbering ahead, farm wagons turned out for them to pass, and hastily
dressed men were thronging alongside. Two of them jumped upon the
running board, but, seeing who sat in the car, muttered some
imprecation and dropped off again. Anthony Crawford stood up and
opened the door.

"I'll walk," he announced briefly. "Load in all the men you can carry.
You will need every one."

Janet climbed over to the place beside her brother, and the tonneau
filled up with men, who crowded the seats, clung to the step and the
fenders, and sat in a row across the back of the car. They came to the
end of the road at last where, in that place that had been so empty
and quiet half an hour ago, there was now gathered a surging crowd of
men, of horses, tractors, automobiles, and wagons. Oliver could see,
on a knoll above the others,