ill kept silent and gave no sign of interest, Spurling
broke out afresh: "Damnation! I tell you you never knew anything about
me. You were always too selfish to take the trouble to get into other
folks' insides; yet you went about complaining that people were
unsympathetic. Here's the difference between us; I may be a scoundrel,
but whatever I've done I've played the man and never blamed anyone
else for my crimes, while you--! You were always a weak dreamer,
depending on others for your strength. You were discontented, but you
never raised your littlest finger in an attempt to make men better.
All you could think of was yourself, and your own ambition to escape.
So though, perhaps, I've sunk to a lower level than you have ever
touched, I want you to know there was once a time when I did reach up
to a nobler and a better."

Gradually, as he had spoken, there had grown into his voice a
concentrated fury. He was giving utterance to an old grievance over
which he had brooded for many years; as happens frequently in such
cases, only a portion of his complaint could be proved by facts, the
remainder being an overgrowth of embittered imagination.

His eyes sought out the face of the man whom he accused, but it told
him nothing; he sat there silent, with his head thrown back a little,
unemotional as the distant stretch of cold grey river up which he
gazed.

The sun had vanished, and the prolonged dusk of the northland was
stealing from out the forest. At length Granger answered him: "It may
be true, and if so, what follows?"

"Oh, nothing: only I thought I'd tell you this so that one man might
not think too badly of me, if before long I should be called upon to
die. I must have looked a horrid beast when I came to you last April."

Whether consciously or not, Granger nodded his head, as much as to
say, "You did. Most certainly you did."

His companion broke into a harsh laugh. "The Reverend Druce Spurling!
How d'you like the sound of it? That's what I might have been to-day,
and a fat lot you care about it."

To Granger, as he listened, there had come the painful knowledge,
bearing out the accusation that he had never cared for the inward
things of men, that this was the first scrap of confession which
Spurling had ever let fall in his presence. Why, up to that moment he
had not heard a word about his mother, and had certainly never
credited him with a pronounced religious instinct.

Yes, perhaps that statement, which