ion, not a movement of a muscle, the twitch of an
eyelid--simply a dead stolid stare. The truth is, they were benumbed as
to feeling, incapable of comprehending anything, of initiating anything,
as I was till--till this afternoon; then I began to live, to feel
again."

"That's only natural. I've heard other men say the same thing. You'll
recover tone here among your own--your friends and other men."

"Have I any?--I mean outside of you and my mother?" he asked in a low
voice, but subdued eagerness was audible in it.

"Have you any? Why, man, a friend is a friend for life--and beyond. Who
was it put it thus: 'Said one: I would go up to the gates of hell with a
friend.--Said the other: I would go in.' That last is the kind you have
here in Flamsted, Champney."

The other turned away his face that the firelight might not betray him.

"It's too much--it's too much; I don't deserve it."

"Champney, when you decided of your own accord to expiate in the manner
you have through these six years, do you think your friends--and
others--didn't recognize your manhood? And didn't you resolve at that
time to 'put aside' those things that were behind you once and
forever?--clear your life of the clogging part?"

"Yes,--but others won't--"

"Never mind others--you are working out your own salvation."

"But it's going to be harder than I thought--I find I am beginning to
dread to meet people--everything is so changed. It's going to be harder
than I realized to carry out that resolution. The Past won't
down--everything is so changed--everything--"

Father Honore rose to turn on the electric lights. He did not take his
seat again, but stood on the hearth, back to the fire, his hands clasped
behind him. The clear light from the shaded bulbs shone full upon the
face of the man before him, and the priest, searching that face to read
its record, saw set upon it, and his heart contracted at the sight, the
indelible seal of six years of penal servitude. The close-cut hair was
gray; the brow was marked by two horizontal furrows; the cheeks were
deeply lined; and the broad shoulders--they were bent. Formerly he stood
before the priest with level eyes, now he was shorter by an inch of the
six feet that were once his. He noticed the hands--the hands of the
day-laborer.

He managed to reply to Champney's last remark without betraying the
emotion that threatened to master him.

"Outwardly, yes; things have changed and will continue to ch