"Nothing, I thank you." The old gentleman looked at him half expectantly,
but Thane was not equal, in words, to the occasion. "This is the place, Mr.
Thane," he cadenced, in his measured, clerical tones. "This is the spot
that last saw my dear boy alive,--that witnessed his agony and death."
He extended a white, thin, and now shaking hand, which Thane grasped,
uncovering his head. Mr. Withers raised his left hand; his pale eyes
blinked in the sunlight; they were dim with tears.

"In memory of John Withers," he pronounced, "foully robbed of life in this
lonely spot, we three are gathered here,--his friend, his father, and his
bride that should have been." Thane's eyes were on the ground, but he
silently renewed his grasp of the old man's hand. "May God be our Guide
as we go hence to finish our separate journeys! May He help us to forgive
as we hope to be forgiven! May He teach us submission! But, O Lord! Thou
knowest it is hard."

"Mr. Withers is a parson, ain't he?" Kinney inquired, as he and Thane, each
leading one of the team horses, and with an empty canteen swinging by its
strap from his shoulder, filed down the little stony gulch that puckers the
first rising ground to riverward of the hollow. "Thought he seemed to be
makin' a prayer or askin' a blessin' or somethin', when he had holt of you
there by the flipper; kind of embarrassin', wa'n't it?"

"That's as one looks at it," said Thane. "Mr. Withers is a clergyman; his
manner may be partly professional, but he strikes one as always sincere.
And he hasn't a particle of self-consciousness where his grief for his
son is concerned. I don't know that he has about anything. He calls on
his Maker just as naturally as you and I, perhaps, might take his name in
vain."