"I think," she said, turning toward us all, with her sweet dignity, her brave air, that touched me as at first and always, beyond any words of mine to describe, but strong and beautiful and sweet and thrilling through me now, like bugles blown at dawn; "I think that we do well, Arthur, to give Henry his money."
And now it was Arthur's voice that rose in the shop; and it seemed that he spoke of his brother as of one who was afar off. We listened with painful intentness to this man who had suffered much and given much, and who still, in his simple heart, asked no praise for what he had done.
"He was so strong, and I was weak; and I did for him what I could. And what I gave, I gave freely, for it is not often in this world that the weak may help the strong. He had the gifts, Pat, that I had not, and troops of friends; and he had ambitions that in my weakness I was not capable of; so I had not much to give. But what I had, Pat, I gave to him; I went to Gillespie and confessed; I took the blame; and I came here and worked with my hands--with my hands--" And he extended them as though the proof were asked; and kept repeating, between, his sobs, "With my hands."
Just as of old! The world rolls on and on; The day dies into night--night into dawn-- Dawn into dusk--through centuries untold.-- Just as of old.
Lo! where is the beginning, where the end Of living, loving, longing? _Listen_, friend!-- God answers with a silence of pure gold-- Just as of old. --_James Whitcomb Riley_.
At midnight Gillespie and I discussed the day's affairs on the terrace at Glenarm. There were long pauses in our talk. Such things as we had seen and heard that night, in the canoe-maker's shop on the little creek, were beyond our poor range of words. And in the silences my own reflections were not wholly happy. If Miss Pat and Rosalind had not followed me to the canoe-maker's I might have spared Helen; but looking back, I would not change it now if I could. Helen had returned to St. Agatha's with her aunt, who would have it so; and we had parted at the school door, Miss Pat and Helen, Gillespie and I, with restraint heavy upon us all. Miss Pat had, it seemed, summoned her lawyer from New York several days before, to discuss the final settlement of her father's estate; and he was expected the next morning. I had asked them all to Glenarm for breakfast; and Arthur Holbrook and Rosalind, and Henry, who had broken down at the end, had agreed to come.