o you know?"

"How does anybody know it, when more than half of himself is just so
much dead matter; when the division line between the dead part and the
alive doesn't move along by so much as one hair's breadth; when the
dead part is dead past any resurrection? It is my body, Whittenden. I
know it for a fact."

There was no especial answer to be made. Whittenden had the superlative
good sense to attempt none. After a silence, Reed spoke again.

"I haven't told anybody of it yet, till now. There was no use, and I
dreaded the row they'd be sure to make. Besides, I wanted to tell you,
first of all, because you are the one man in reach who has seen me in
the thick of things, and I knew there would be any amount of detail you
would take in, without my having to explain it to you."

The rector nodded. Through his curling smoke-trails, it seemed to him
he caught a glimpse of the rugged, ragged Colorado mountains, of a
shabby mining camp centring in a group of shafts, of squads of
rough-faced miners, and of Reed Opdyke, smiling and alert, striding
here and there among them, laying down the law superbly, a king among
his loyal and adoring subjects. And now--Whittenden flung back his
head, and his clear eyes glowed with his belief. Never more a king than
now, as he lay there, quiet, but very potent, establishing his throne
above the level of the powers of darkness who murmured threateningly
about his feet! And, meanwhile,--

"Queer thing about our bodies," Reed was saying; "queer and almost a
little cruel. We drive them at top speed and never think a thing about
them, as long as they go on all right. It's when they snap, that we
begin to realize all the things they've stood for."

Again there came the silence, while the eyes of the two men rested on
each other, more eloquent than many words. At last, Reed spoke again.

"It's all hours, Whittenden. I've been a beast to keep you up; still,
it is a relief to have it out and over. Now go to bed. Before you go,
though--for now and then we all of us want something we can hang on to,
and this is one of the times--I don't mean to funk my own share in the
main issue; but, Whittenden, before you go off to bed, would you mind
just saying the _Our Father_? It's some time since I've heard it, and,
in this present muddle of my universe, I've a general notion it might
be of help."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was not until well on in the next day that the two men spoke of
Brenton