He saw the great, blunt-fingered hands which had killed men, which were
feared through the length and breadth of the mountain-desert, stretched
out to him.

"Anthony Drew!" said the voice.

His hand went out, feebly, by slow degrees, and was caught in a mighty
double clasp. Warmth flowed through him from that grasp, and a great
emotion troubled him, and a voice from deep to deep echoed within
him--the call of blood to blood. He knew the truth, for the hate burned
out in him and left only an infinite sadness.

He said: "What of the man who loved me? Whom I love?"

"I have done penance for that death," answered William Drew, "and I
shall do more penance before I die. For I am only your father in name,
but he is the father in your thoughts and in your love. Is it true?"

"It is true," said Anthony.

And the other, bitterly: "In his life he was as strong as I; in his
death he is still stronger. It is his victory; his shadow falls between
us."

But Anthony answered: "Let us go together and bring his body and bury it
at the left side of--my mother."

"Lad, it is the one thing we can do together, and after that?"

A plaintive sound came to the ear of Anthony, and he looked down to see
Sally Fortune weeping at the grave of Joan. Better than both the men she
understood, perhaps. In the deep tenderness which swelled through him he
caught a sense of the drift of life through many generations of the past
and projecting into the future, men and women strong and fair and each
with a high and passionate love.

The men died and the women changed, but the love persisted with the will
to live. It came from a thousand springs, but it rolled in one river to
one sea. The past stood there in the form of William Drew; he and Sally
made the present, and through his love of her sprang the hope of the
future.

It was all very clear to him. The love of Bard and Drew for Joan Piotto
had not died, but passed through the flame and the torment of the three
ruined lives and returned again with gathering power as the force which
swept him and Sally Fortune out into that river and toward that far-off
sea. The last mist was brushed from his eyes. He saw with a piercing
vision the world, himself, life. He looked to William Drew and saw that
he was gazing on an old and broken man.

He said to the old man: "Father, she is wiser than us both."

And he pointed to Sally Fortune, still weeping softly on the grave of
Joan.

But William Drew had