ortality; has pathetically credited the First Cause with a grand
ultimate intention concerning each suffering atom; has assured himself
that eternity shall wipe away all tears and blood, shall reward the
actors in this puppet-show with golden crowns and nobler parts in a
nobler playhouse. Human dreams of justice are responsible for this
yearning towards another life, not the dogmas of religion; and the
conviction undoubtedly has to be thanked for much individual right
conduct. But it happens that an increasing number of intellects can find
solace in these theories no longer; it happens that the liberty of free
thought (which is the only liberty man may claim) will not longer be
bound with these puny chains. Many detect no just argument for a future
life; they admit that adequate estimate of abstract Justice is beyond
them; they suspect that Justice is a human conceit; and they see no
cause why its attributes should be credited to the Creator in His
dealings with the created, for the sufficient reason that Justice has
never been consistently exhibited by Him. The natural conclusion of such
thought need not be pursued here. Suffice it that, taking their stand on
pure reason, such thinkers deny the least evidence of any life beyond
the grave; to them, therefore, this ephemeral progression is the
beginning and the end, and they live every precious moment with a
yearning zest beyond the power of conventional intellects to conceive.

Of such was Clement Hicks. And yet in this dark hour he cried for
Justice, not knowing to whom or to what he cried. Right judgment was
dead at last. He rose and shook his head in mute answer to the voices
still clamouring to his consciousness. They moaned and reverberated and
mingled with the distant music of the bellwether, but his mind was made
up irrevocably now; he had determined to do the thing he had come to do.
He told himself nothing much mattered any more; he laughed as he rose
and wiped the sweat off his face, and passed down Steeperton through
debris of granite. "Life's only a breath and then--Nothing," he thought;
"but it will be interesting to see how much more bitterness and agony
those that pull the strings can cram into my days. I shall watch from
the outside now. A man is never happy so long as he takes a personal
interest in life. Henceforth I'll stand outside and care no more, and
laugh and laugh on through the years. We're greater than the Devil that
made us; for we can laugh a