side me through that long
passage--we were two weeks--the stronger because it was unconscious, the
stronger, I think, too, that it rested on no intellectual basis, but was
wholly and purely spiritual--as the confidence of a child might hold a
man to his duty where the arguments of a sophist would have no effect.
As I say, I went through a great deal. My mind was a battle-field for
the powers of good and evil during those two weeks, but the man who was
leading the forces of the right never knew it. The outcome was that as
soon as I landed I took my passage back on the next boat, which sailed
at once. Within a year, within a month almost, I knew that the decision
I made then was a turning-point, that to have done otherwise would have
meant ruin in more than one way. I tremble now to think how close I was
to shipwreck. All that I am, all that I have, I owe more or less
directly to that man's unknown influence. The measure of a life is its
service. Much opportunity for that, much power has been in my hands, and
I have tried to hold it humbly and reverently, remembering that time. I
have thought of myself many times us merely the instrument, fitted to
its special use, of that consecrated soul."

The voice stopped, and the boy, his wide, shining eyes fixed on his
father's face, drew a long breath. In a moment he spoke, and the father
knew, as well as if he had said it, how little of his feeling he could
put into words.

"It makes you shiver, doesn't it," he said, "to think what effect you
may be having on people, and never know it? Both you and I, father--our
lives changed, saved--by the influence of two strangers, who hadn't
the least idea what they were doing. It frightens you."

"I think it makes you know," said the older man, slowly, "that not your
least thought is unimportant; that the radiance of your character shines
for good or evil where you go. Our thoughts, our influences, are like
birds that fly from us as we walk along the road; one by one, we open
our hands and loose them, and they are gone and forgotten, but surely
there will be a day when they will come back on white wings or dark like
a cloud of witnesses--"

The man stopped, his voice died away softly, and he stared into the
blaze with solemn eyes, as if he saw a vision. The boy, suddenly aware
again of the strong hand on his shoulder, leaned against it lovingly,
and the fire, talking unconcernedly on, was for a long time the only
sound in the warmth and