him, the tips of the thumb and fingers of the right hand just touching the tips of the thumb and fingers of the left hand and making a rudely elliptical basket into which he was looking as if for inspiration.
Rollie, waiting,—hoping, without knowing what to hope,—had begun to study Hampstead's face with a respectful interest he had never felt before. He noticed the dark shadows beneath the gray eyes, and that lines were beginning to seam the brow, while just now the broad shoulders had a bent look. For the first time it occurred to him that Hampstead's work might be hard work, and he began to feel a kind of reverence for a man who would work so hard for other people, and to reflect that it was noble thus to expend one's energies,—noble to be true to trusts of any sort. It was admirable. It was worthy of emulation. A sudden envy of Hampstead's character seized him, and he began, in the midst of his own distress, to think how one proceeded to get such a character. By the simple process of being true to trusts, the minister had suggested. But this seemed rather hopeless for Rollie. His chance had gone—unless! His mind halted and fastened its hope desperately to this grave, silent, meditative face.
The minister was considering very delicate questions: trying to decide how much weight the slender moral backbone of this softling could carry, asking whether by leaning upon the side of mercy, by taking some very serious responsibility upon himself, he might not shelter him from the consequences of his crime while a new character was grown.
But such questions are not definitely answerable in advance, and it was neither Hampstead's usual magnanimity nor his leaning toward mercy, but his moral enthusiasm for the rehabilitation of lost character that impelled him to take a chance in his decision.
