to see friendship shining in those piercing black eyes rather than the
light of enmity. Leonard was a bad enemy, and his long striving with the
world sometimes led him to expect foes where they did not exist.

Even now this thought was in his mind: "He is dying," he said to
himself, as he laid down the glass with the care of a man who cannot
afford to hazard a belonging however trivial, "and yet his face is
not so changed as mine is. My God! he is dying! My brother--the only
man--the only living creature I love in the world, except one perhaps,
if indeed I love her still. Everything is against us--I should say
against me now, for I cannot count him. Our father was our first enemy;
he brought us into the world, neglected us, squandered our patrimony,
dishonoured our name, and shot himself. And since then what has it been
but one continual fight against men and nature? Even the rocks in which
I dig for gold are foes--victorious foes--" and he glanced at his hands,
scarred and made unshapely by labour. "And the fever, that is a foe.
Death is the only friend, but he won't shake hands with me. He takes my
brother whom I love as he has taken the others, but me he leaves."

Thus mused Leonard sitting sullenly on the red box, his elbow on his
knee, his rough hands held beneath his chin pushing forward the thick
black beard till it threw a huge shadow, angular and unnatural, on to
the wall of the hut, while without the tempest now raved, now lulled,
and now raved again. An hour--two--passed and still he sat not moving,
watching the face of the fever-stricken man that from time to time
flushed and was troubled, then grew pale and still. It seemed to him
as though by some strange harmony of nature the death-smitten blood was
striving to keep pace with the beat of the storm, knowing that presently
life and storm would pass together into the same domain of silence.