may save a soul?"

He was breathing deeply. As he excoriated himself and bared his weakness
the hot blood crept slowly into his face.

"Why do you want me to go?" he demanded. "Why don't you ask some man
with red blood in his veins and a heart that hasn't been burned out? Why
have you asked me?"

Father Roland made as if to speak, and then caught himself. Again for a
passing flash there came that mysterious change in him, a sudden dying
out of the enthusiasm in his eyes, and a grayness in his face that came
and went like a shadow of pain. In another moment he was saying:

"I'm not playing the part of the good Samaritan, David. I've got a
personal and a selfish reason for wanting you with me. It may be
possible--just possible, I say--that I need you even more than you will
need me." He held out his hand. "Let me have your checks and I'll go
ahead to the baggage car and arrange to have your dunnage thrown off
with mine at the Frenchman's."

David gave him the checks, and sat down after he had gone. He began to
realize that, for the first time in many months, he was taking a deep
and growing interest in matters outside his own life. The night and its
happenings had kindled a strange fire within him, and the warmth of this
fire ran through his veins and set his body and his brain tingling
curiously. New forces were beginning to fight his own malady. As he sat
alone after Father Roland had gone, his mind had dragged itself away
from the East; he thought of a woman, but it was the woman in the third
coach back. Her wonderful eyes haunted him--their questing despair, the