a pious
monk his missal.

He was right in his judgment. When Terry left the theatre he was like
one in a dream, every nerve in his body at tension, his head aflame,
his pulses throbbing. For miles he rode away into the waste along the
northern trail, ever away from La Touche and his own home. He did not
know of the great good fortune that had come to him; and if, in this
hour, he had known, he would not have cared. As he rode on and on
remorse drew him into its grasp. Shame seized him that he had let
passion be his master, that he had lost his self-control, had taken a
revenge out of all proportion to the injury and insult to himself. It
did not ease his mind that he knew Constantine Jopp had done the thing
out of meanness and malice; for he was alive to-night in the light of
the stars, with the sweet crisp air blowing in his face, because of an
act of courage on the part of his schooldays' foe. He remembered now
that, when he was drowning, he had clung to Jopp with frenzied arms and
had endangered the bully's life also. The long torture of owing
this debt to so mean a soul was on him still, was rooted in him; but
suddenly, in the silent searching night, some spirit whispered in his
ear that this was the price which he must pay for his life saved to the
world, a compromise with the Inexorable Thing. On the verge of oblivion
and the end, he had been snatched back by relenting Fate, which requires
something for something given, when laws are overridden and doom
defeated. Yes, the price he was meant to pay was gratitude to one of
shrivelled soul and innate antipathy; and he had not been man enough
to see the trial through to the end! With a little increased strain put
upon his vanity and pride he had run amuck. Like some heathen gladiator
he had ravaged in the ring. He had gone down into the basements of human
life and there made a cockpit for his animal rage, till, in the contest,
brain and intellect had been saturated by the fumes and sweat of fleshly
fury.

How quiet the night was, how soothing to the fevered mind and body, how
the cool air laved the heated head and flushed the lungs of the rheum of
passion! He rode on and on, farther and farther away from home, his
back upon the scenes where his daily deeds were done. It was long past
midnight before he turned his horse's head again homeward.

Buried in his thoughts, now calm and determined, with a new life grown
up in him, a new strength different from the masteri