Instantly the man's face changed. A light sprang into his eyes. He
looked round him cautiously, and said in a whisper:

"You are one of us!"

There was scarce a moment's pause before Dalaber replied:

"I am one of you--in heart and purpose, at least, if not in actual
fact."

He paced home through the streets in a tempest of conflicting
emotions. But his mind was made up. Come what might--peril,
suffering, or death--he had put his hand to the plough. He would
not look back.

"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of
life."

He seemed to walk to the accompaniment of these words; and when he
reached Garret's house he went straight to the master, told his
story, and knelt suddenly down before him.

"Bless me, even me also, O my father!" he exclaimed, in a burst of
emotion to which his temperament made him subject, "for I would now
be admitted as member of the Association of Christian Brothers."