re irregular and unnoticeable; but the sum-total of
them gave the impression of force. It was a strong face, yet you
could see that it had once been a weak one. It was a tremendously
human face, a face like a battle-ground, scarred and seamed and
lined with the stress of invisible conflicts.... Not a triumphant
face at all, and yet there was peace in it. Somehow, the man had
achieved something, arrived somewhere, and the record of the journey
was piteous and terrible. Yet it drew the eyes in awe as much as in
wonder, and in pity not at all.

Oliver, reassured by the new presence, and glad to find himself at
last facing a man who has nothing left to fear in life, states as well
as possible his main problem. The father of his beloved listens, first
with surprise at the news, then with seriousness. Oliver finds himself
forced to cut deep when he repeats his own father's appeal to know the
convict's opinion about what a man expects to meet in his future
wife's family, and then pauses with a keen sense of the cruelty of his
own position. But Lannithorne, who has long since become accustomed to
feeling the ploughshare of passion grind down to his uttermost rock,
is perfectly ready with his response. As the youth pauses and then
begins a new appeal--

The man looked up and held up an arresting hand. "Let me clear the
way for you a little," he said. "It was a hard {248} thing for you
to come and seek me out in this place. I like your coming. Most
young men would have refused, or come in a different spirit. I want
you to understand that if in Ruth's eyes, and my wife's, and your
father's, my counsel has value, it is because they think I see
things as they are. And that means, first of all, that I know myself
for a man who committed a crime and is paying the penalty. I am
satisfied to be paying it. As I see justice, it is just. So, if I
seem to wince at your necessary allusions to it, that is part of the
price. I don't want you to feel that you are blundering or hurting
me more than is necessary. You have got to lay the thing before me
as it is."

Something in the words, in the dry, patient manner, in the endurance
of the man's face, touched Oliver to the quick and made him feel all
manner of new things: such as a sense of the moral poise of the
universe, acquiescence in its retributions, and a curious pride,
akin to Ruth's own, in a man who could meet him after this fashion,