an added benefit. Besides, he had seen that O'Ryan was in earnest, and
what O'Ryan wanted he himself wanted even more strongly. He was not
concerned greatly for O'Ryan's absence. He guessed that Terry had ridden
away into the night to work off the dark spirit that was on him, to have
it out with himself. Gow Johnson was a philosopher. He was twenty years
older than O'Ryan, and he had studied his friend as a pious monk his
missal.

He was right in his judgment. When Terry left the theatre he was like
one in a dream, every nerve in his body at tension, his head aflame, his
pulses throbbing. For miles he rode away into the waste along the
northern trail, ever away from La Touche and his own home. He did not
know of the great good fortune that had come to him; and if, in this
hour, he had known, he would not have cared. As he rode on and on
remorse drew him into its grasp. Shame seized him that he had let
passion be his master, that he had lost his self-control, had taken a
revenge out of all proportion to the injury and insult to himself. It
did not ease his mind that he knew Constantine Jopp had done the thing
out of meanness and malice; for he was alive to-night in the light of
the stars, with the sweet crisp air blowing in his face, because of an
act of courage on the part of his schooldays' foe. He remembered now
that, when he was drowning, he had clung to Jopp with frenzied arms and
had endangered the bully's life also. The long torture of owing this
debt to so mean a soul was on him still, was rooted in him; but suddenly,
in the silent searching night, some spirit whispered in his ear that this
was the price which he must pay for his life saved to the world, a
compromise with the Inexorable Thing. On the verge of oblivion and the
end, he had been snatched back by relenting Fate, which requires
something for something given, when laws are overridden and doom
defeated. Yes, the price he was meant to pay was gratitude to one of