the wilderness. And in the years the secret picture
had grown very clear, curiously full of meaning. There was descried,
like something remembered from another life, an innumerable company upon
a rocky plain, a little river rushing by, and in the distance a City....

He had seen something of life in his time at the medical school, and
before that, when he was still looking about, trying to decide what he
should do. He had observed in these days of leisure, read, and burned.
And he had come back to his old home-city, overflowing with fine
passions, aflame with new-old secrets and forgotten truths. What
speeches there had been to make in those days, what roaring things to
write, what shouts to be flung from the house-tops!

And now he had been at home again over a year; he had been right here
in the Dabney House a year this month. And what had he done for
his faith?

He had done precisely what a weak man does, precisely what he had
passionately resolved never to do. He had found life hard, and he had
compromised with it. A minute routine pressed upon him, and he had
suffered that routine to swamp his perspective, to drown out his fires.
It was a good and useful work that he did: he never doubted that. To
take the pain from a sick body, to put a coat on a bare back, this was
worth a man's doing. But none knew better than he that that body would
grow sick again, that back once more wear naked: and all the while the
untouched causes of these wrongs festered and reinfected and spread, and
a fig for your Settlements and your redoubled "relief." Was there not a
bay-tree that flourished, and had he not been summoned in a vision to
lay an axe to its roots? Behold, he gave his youth to spraying at the
parasites upon a single small leaf.

And was it only the grinding round of work that had brought him to this
compromise? Was it possible that personal considerations had seduced
him, as Samuel O'Neill appeared to hint? That would be base, indeed....

But no ... No, his mind, though it seemed without mercy to-night, would
acquit him of that. If he had been seduced, it was by a voice in him,
confused, it might be, but strong nevertheless, and not dishonest. He
had thought that perhaps people could be more gently acquainted with
their responsibilities, that in their hearts they wanted to correct
their own mistakes. He had asked who appointed him a judge over men....

And now there were articles to write, to publish in November, to