though the ground is not yet on him; that who wrongs another clouds his own
sun; and that who sins in secret stands accursed and condemned before the
one Judge who deals eternal justice--his own all-knowing self.

"Experience will teach us this, and reason will show us why it must be so;
but at first the world swings before our eyes, and no voice cries out,
'This is the way, walk ye in it!' You are happy to be here, boy! When the
suspense fills you with pain you build stone walls and dig earth for
relief. Others have stood where you stand today, and have felt as you
feel; and another relief has been offered them, and they have taken it.

"When the day has come when they have seen the path in which they might
walk, they have not the strength to follow it. Habits have fastened on
them from which nothing but death can free them; which cling closer than
his sacerdotal sanctimony to a priest; which feed on the intellect like a
worm, sapping energy, hope, creative power, all that makes a man higher
than a beast--leaving only the power to yearn, to regret, and to sink lower
in the abyss.

"Boy," he said, and the listener was not more unsmiling now than the
speaker, "you are happy to be here! Stay where you are. If you ever pray,
let it be only the one old prayer--'Lead us not into temptation.' Live on
here quietly. The time may yet come when you will be that which other men
have hoped to be and never will be now."

The stranger rose, shook the dust from his sleeve, and ashamed at his own
earnestness, looked across the bushes for his horse.

"We should have been on our way already," he said. "We shall have a long
ride in the dark tonight."