me then. But if it's true, you'll
belong to England and to all the world, too, and you'll have fame
everlasting. I'll have gold for her and for you, and for your Alice, too,
dear old man. Wake up now and remember if you are Dyke Allingham, who went
with Franklin to the silent seas of the Pole. If it's you, really you,
what wonder you lost your memory! You saw them all die, Franklin and all,
die there in the snow, with all the white world round them. If you were
there, what a travel you have had, what strange things you have seen!
Where the world is loneliest, God lives most. If you get close to the
heart of things, it's no marvel you forgot what you were, or where you
came from; because it didn't matter; you knew that you were only one of
thousands of millions who have come and gone, that make up the soul of
things, that make the pulses of the universe beat. That's it, dear old
man. The universe would die, if it weren't for the souls that leave this
world and fill it with life. Wake up! Wake up, Allingham, and tell us
where you've been, and what you've seen."

He did not labor in vain. Slowly consciousness came back, and the gray
eyes opened wide, the lips smiled faintly under the bushy beard; but
Bickersteth saw that the look in the face was much the same as it had been
before. The struggle had been too great, the fight for the other lost self
had exhausted him, mind and body, and only a deep obliquity and a great
weariness filled the countenance. He had come back to the verge, he had
almost again discovered himself; but the opening door had shut fast
suddenly, and he was back again in the night, the incompanionable night of
forgetfulness.

Bickersteth saw that the travail and strife had drained life and energy,
and that he must not press the mind and vitality of this exile of time and
the unknown too far. He felt that when the next test came the old man
would either break completely, and sink down into another and everlasting
forgetfulness, or tear away forever the veil between himself and his past,
and emerge into a long-lost life. His strength must be shepherded, and he
must be kept quiet and undisturbed until they came to the town yonder in
the valley, over which the night was slowly settling down. There two women
waited, the two Alices, from both of whom had gone lovers into the North.
The daughter was living over again in her young love the pangs of suspense
through which her mother had passed. Two years since Bi