ome. But would it be
utterly impossible for him to venture back, changed as he was by these
many years, to England? It would be only Jean Merle who would travel
thither, there could be no resurrection for Roland Sefton. But could not
Jean Merle see from afar off the old home; or Phebe Marlowe's cottage on
the hill-side; or possibly his mother, or his children; nay, Felicita
herself? Only afar off; as some banished, repentant soul, drawing a
little nearer to the walls of the eternal city, might be favored with a
glimpse of the golden streets, and the white-robed citizens therein, the
memory of which would dwell within him for evermore.

As he drew nearer the end he grew more eager to reach it. The dull
apathy of the past thirteen years was transformed into a feverish
anticipation of his secret journey to England with the accumulated
proceeds of his work and his speculations; which in some way or other
must find their way into the hands of the men who had trusted him in
time past. But at this juncture the bankers at Lucerne failed him, as
he had failed others. It was not simply that his speculations turned
out badly; but the men to whom he had intrusted the conduct of them,
from his solitary mountain-home, had defrauded him; and the bank broke.
The measure he had meted out to others had been measured to him again.
Whatsoever he had done unto men they had done unto him.

For three days Jean Merle wandered about the eternal frosts of the
ice-bound peaks and snow-fields of the mountains around him, living he
did not himself know how. It was not money he had lost. Like old Marlowe
he realized how poor a symbol money was of the long years of ceaseless
toil, the days of self-denial, the hours of anxious thoughts it
represented. And besides this darker side, it stood also for the hopes
he had cherished, vaguely, almost unconsciously, but still with strong
earnestness. He had fled from the penalty the just laws of his country
demanded from him, taking refuge in a second and more terrible fraud,
and now God suffered him not to make this small reparation for his sin,
or to taste the single drop of satisfaction that he hoped for in
realizing the object he had set before him. There was no place of
repentance for him; not a foot-hold in all the wide wilderness of his
banishment on which he could stand, and repair one jot a little of the
injury he had inflicted upon his fellow-men.

What passed through his soul those three days, amid