nd his vision past the company, into
those things which are not, to confound the things which are.

"For myself, it does not matter. 'He buries His workmen, but carries on
His work.'" The man spoke in a heavy, broken voice, as though it were
his body that suffered. "But it comes hard to hear, from a young man, so
good a friend, after many years"--The deep-set eyes returned, and with a
sudden lustre, made a sharp survey from face to face. "If I have made my
flock a remnant--aliens--rejected--tell me, what shall I do? Tell me. I
have shut eyes and conscience, and never meddled, never!--not even when
money was levied for the village idols. And here's a man beaten, cast
into prison--"

He shoved both fists out on the table, and bowed his white head.

"My safety is nothing. But yours--and his.--To keep one, I desert the
other. Either way." The padre groaned. "What must I choose?"

"We're all quite helpless," said Heywood, gently. "Quite. It's a long
way to the nearest gunboat."

"Tell me," repeated the other, stubbornly.

At the same moment it happened that the cries came louder along the
river-bank, and that some one bounded up the stairs.

The runner was Rudolph. All morning he had gone about his errands very
calmly, playing the man of action, in a new philosophy learned
overnight. But now he forgot to imitate his teacher, and darted in, so
headlong that all the dogs came with him, bouncing and barking.

"Look," he called, stumbling toward the farther window, while Flounce
the terrier and a wonk puppy ran nipping at his heels. "Come, look at
them! Out on the river!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE SPARE MAN

Beyond the scant greenery of Heywood's garden--a ropy little banyan, a
low rank of glossy whampee leaves, and the dusty sage-green tops of
stunted olives--glared the river. Wide, savage sunlight lay so hot upon
it, that to aching eyes the water shone solid, like a broad road of
yellow clay. Only close at hand and by an effort of vision, appeared the
tiny, quiet lines of the irresistible flood pouring toward the sea;
there whipped into the pool of banyan shade black snippets and tails of
reflection, darting ceaselessly after each other like a shoal of
frightened minnows. But elsewhere the river lay golden, solid, and
painfully bright. Things afloat, in the slumberous procession of all
Eastern rivers, swam downward imperceptibly, now blurred, now outlined
in corrosive sharpness.

The white men stood crowding alon