We are like the blind moving in regions unfamiliar to their touch,"
said Sir Walter. "I had hoped so much from the prayer of that just man.
He, indeed, has gone to his reward. He is with the boy he loved better
than anything on earth; but for us is left great sorrow and distress.
Still, prayers continue to be answered, Mannering. I have prayed for
patience, and I find myself patient. The iron has entered my soul. The
horror of publicity--the morbid agony I experienced when I knew my name
must be dragged through every newspaper in England--these pangs are
past. My life seems to have ended in one sense, and, looking back, I
cannot fail to see how little I grasped the realities of existence, how
I took my easy days as a matter of course and never imagined that for
me, too, extreme suffering and misery were lying in wait. Each man's own
burden seems the hardest to bear, I imagine, and to me these events have
shrivelled the very marrow in my bones. They scorched me, and the glare,
thrown from the larger world into the privacy of my life, made me feel
that I could call on the hills to cover me. But now I can endure all."

"You must not look at it so, Sir Walter. Everybody knows that you have
done no wrong, and if your judgment is questioned, what is it? Only the
fate every man--great or small, famous or insignificant--has to bear.
You can't escape criticism in this world, any more than you can escape
calumny. It is something that you can now speak so steadfastly, preserve
such patience, and see so clearly, too. But, for my part, clear seeing
only increases my anxiety to-night. I don't personally care a button for
the welfare of those men, since they declined to take my advice; but
I am human, and as I suffer with a sick patient and rejoice when he
recovers, so I cannot help suffering at the thought of the risk these
four are running. They sit there, I suppose, or else walk about. They
wear gas masks, and carry weapons in their hands. But if we are opposed
to a blind, deaf, unreasoning force, which acts unconsciously and
inevitably, then the fate of ten men would be just as uncertain as the
fate of one. The thing operates by day or night--that much has been
proved--and, since it is probably acting automatically, as lightning or
steam, how can they escape?"

"This invisible death-dealing force may be in the control of a human
mind, remember."

"It is beyond the bounds of possibility, Sir Walter."

"You are a rash man to affi