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Three friends sat smoking in front of a glowing fireplace. The room, and, in fact, the whole house, bespoke luxury and good taste.
Two of the men had just come in from the cold, wet streets. Their clothes bore the marks of much travel and rough usage. There was something in their manner of absorbing the luxury about them that plainly told that they were both used to it and strangers to it.
Their gaze of wonder, almost of awe, had been fastened on their host almost continually since their entrance. There were about them stains of weather and physical exposure and hard knocks. Yet there shone transparently thru it all, the clear, healthy tints of mind and soul.
Not so with their host. He was to them as a gray, half -burnt-out ash is to the flaming pine knot. His skin was not ruddy like theirs, but pale and pasty. Altho in his prime, his hair was white. And thru his eyes one could see the scars on his soul.
When he spoke, tho, his voice was not unmusical, for it held a human note of almost unnatural thankfulness in it. That voice, in its rich mellow gratitude, suggested the joy that only the reborn soul can know.
After a silence of several minutes, he turned his half-sad eyes upon his guests, a smile turning the corners of his sensitive lips.
"Jim — Frank; thank God, I can help you ! You have come to me like the men you are and always have been. To me — who robbed you of
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fifteen years of life here among those you loved, and drove you into God knows what dire difficulties. If you were to ask me for all this" — his pale white hands flashed a gesture in the firelight that included his possessions — "I would give it to you. But that would not be after the manner of men of your caliber. Tomorrow I shall leave my business interests in your trust and charge — if you will accept them. Behind that curtain yonder" — again the expressive hand flashed, and the two men bent their heads forward until they thought they heard fairy-like voices in the distance — "lies the one world I want to give my remaining life to.
"You men are amazed, somewhat, at the change you find in me. Your wits are busy calculating the value of my estate and doubting the genuineness of my esteem. Perhaps you dont believe in omens. I didn't, either. You expected to find me in jail — at least in the gutter, penniless. They say God moves in a mysterious way. The mysterious agency that accounts for everything that no doubt excites your wonderment was surely too benign to be anything else but God's intervention. All I ask is that you believe in me, whether you believe what I tell you or not. ' '
He threw his now dead cigar into the glowing grate and moved his chair so he could look squarely into the eyes of his silent companions — the two men who had come, in fact, to choke the truth out of his throat in payment for the dog's life he had