From his brothers he would get no help. The least memory of those
sallow, hungry faces convinced him of that.

There remained the gaming table. In the north country he had watched
men sit in a silent circle, smoking, drinking, with the flare of an
oil-lamp against deep, seamed faces, and only the slip and whisper of
card against card.

Cold conscience tapped the shoulder of Pierre, remembering the lessons
of Father Victor, but a moment later his head went up and his eyes
were shining through the dark. After all, the end justified the means.

A moment later he was laughing softly as a boy in the midst of a
prank, and busily throwing off the robe of serge. Fumbling through the
night he located the shirt and trousers he had seen hanging from a
nail on the wall. Into these he slipped, and then went out under
the open sky.

The rest had revived the strength of the tough little cow-pony, and he
drove on at a gallop toward the twinkling lights of Morgantown. There
was a new consciousness about Pierre as if he had changed his whole
nature with his clothes. The sober sense of duty which had kept him in
awe all his life like a lifted finger, was almost gone, and in its
place was a joyous freedom.

For the first time he faintly realized what an existence other than
that of a priest might be. Now for a brief moment he could forget the
part of the subdued novice and become merely a man with nothing about
him to distinguish him from other men, nothing to make heads turn at