"You said the word," Barrett solemnly assented, bending to cover Findlay's face from the glare of heaven with his hat.
Barrett turned away, feeling that the past few minutes had aged him by twenty years. The day was bright around him, yet there seemed a mistiness in it, a gloom and solemn hush.
Alma was speeding toward him across the road. She was as hope and life coming where death had trampled but a few moments past. And she came straight to him, unfalteringly as a dove homing to its refuge out of the storm, and bent her head upon his breast, and clung to him and cried.
He led her away from that scene of desolation—for death is desolate, always, its atmosphere despairing and dark—to the gate beside the cedars, where he consoled and assured her and calmed her fears away. It was revealed to him then that he had not failed; that a strong man must wait for his hour, and strike; that it is the fool who hurls himself against the barbican of fate, to perish in the evil of his day.
"He's askin' for you, Ed," Fred Grubb said, coming softly to the porch, the awe of death still over him.
Nearing was propped against his pillows; the sweat of death was on his brow. He tried to lift his hand, as if to offer it to Barrett, as the young man came into the room. Barrett stopped just inside the door, and the trembling hand fell to the cover, where it lay opening and closing weakly, as if it struggled faintly to grasp again the slipping cable of life.
A moment Nearing fixed Barrett with his harassed
