men shall say, 'Are we not
brethren and the sons of one Father?'"

Peter Halket looked upward silently. And the stranger said: "Certain
men slept upon a plain, and the night was chill and dark. And, as they
slept, at that hour when night is darkest, one stirred. Far off to the
eastward, through his half-closed eyelids, he saw, as it were, one faint
line, thin as a hair's width, that edged the hill tops. And he whispered
in the darkness to his fellows: 'The dawn is coming.' But they, with
fast-closed eyelids murmured, 'He lies, there is no dawn.'

"Nevertheless, day broke."

The stranger was silent. The fire burnt up in red tongues of flame that
neither flickered nor flared in the still night air. Peter Halket crept
near to the stranger.

"When will that time be?" he whispered; "in a thousand years' time?"

And the stranger answered, "A thousand years are but as our yesterday's
journey, or as our watch tonight, which draws already to its close. See,
piled, these rocks on which we now stand? The ages have been young and
they have grown old since they have lain here. Half that time shall
not pass before that time comes; I have seen its dawning already in the
hearts of men."

Peter moved nearer, so that he almost knelt at the stranger's feet: his
gun lay on the ground at the other side of the fire.

"I would like to be one of your men," he said. "I am tired of belonging
to the Chartered Company."

The stranger looked down gently. "Peter Simon Halket," he said, "can you
bear the weight?"

And Peter said, "Give me work, that I may try."

There was silence for a time; then the stranger said, "Peter Simon
Halket, take a message to England"--Peter Halket started--"Go to that
great people and cry aloud to it: 'Where is the sword was given into
your hand, that with it you might enforce justice and deal out mercy?
How came you to give it up into the hands of men whose search is gold,
whose thirst is wealth, to whom men's souls and bodies are counters in a
game? How came you to give up the folk that were given into your hands,
into the hand of the speculator and the gamester; as though they were
dumb beasts who might be bought or sold?

"'Take back your sword, Great People--but wipe it first, lest some of
the gold and blood stick to your hand.

"'What is this, I see!--the sword of the Great People, transformed to
burrow earth for gold, as the snouts of swine for earth nuts! Have you
no other use for it, Great Folk?