character of the absconding bank clerk that had aroused in this
remarkable old gentlewoman the peculiar sense of kinship--of
possession--that had determined her attitude toward the stranger. The
law that like calls to like is not less applicable to things spiritual
than to things material. The birds of a feather that always flock
together are not of necessity material birds of material feathers.

Nor was Brian Kent himself unconscious of his Re-Creation. The man knew
what he was, as every man knows deep within himself the real self that
is. And that was the horror of the situation which had set him adrift on
the river that night when, in his last drunken despairing frenzy, he had
left the world with a curse in his heart and had faced the black unknown
with reckless laughter and a profane toast. It is to be doubted if
there can be a hell of greater torment than that experienced by one who,
endowed by nature with a capacity for great living, is betrayed by the
very strength of his genius into a situation that is intolerable of his
real self, and is forced, thus, to a continuous self-crucifixion and
death.

In his new environment the man felt the awakening of this self which he
had mourned as dead. Thoughts, emotions, dreams, aspirations, which had,
as he believed, been killed, he found were not dead, but only sleeping;
and in the quickening of their vitality and strength he knew a joy as
great as had been his despair.

The beauty of nature, that had lost its power of appeal to his sodden
soul, now stirred him to the very depth of his being. The crisp,
sun-sweet air of the autumn mornings, when he went forth with his ax
to the day's clean labor, was a draught of potent magic that set every
nerve of him tingling with delight. The woodland hillside, where he