t and the best there is, if there is any best. They and you
have trusted me, been too good to me, and what I said at the trial is
not enough. I want to do what I've never done before. I want to tell
everything. It will do me good; and perhaps as I tell it I'll see myself
and everything else in a truer light than I've yet seen it all."

"You are sure you want Mrs. Tynan and her daughter to hear?"

"Absolutely sure."

"They are not in your rank in life, you know."

"They are my friends, and I owe them more than I can say. There is
nothing they cannot or should not hear. I can say that at least."

"Shall I ask them to come?"

"Yes. Give me a swig of water first. It won't be easy, but--"

He held out his hand, and the Young Doctor grasped it.

Suddenly the latter said: "You are sure you will not be sorry? That it
is not a mood of the moment due to physical weakness?"

"Quite sure. I determined on it the day I was shot--and before I was
shot."

"All right." The Young Doctor disappeared.

CHAPTER VI. "HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON"

The stillness of a summer's day in Prairie Land has all the
characteristics of music. That is not so paradoxical as it seems. The
effect of some music is to produce a divine quiescence of the senses,
a suspension of motion and aggressive life; to reduce existence to mere
pulsation. It was this kind of feeling which pervaded that region
of sentient being when Shiel Crozier told his story. The sounds that
sprinkled the general stillness were in themselves sleepy notes of the
pervasive music of somnolent nature--the sough of the pine at the door,
the murmur of insect life, the low, thudding beat of the steam-thresher
out of sight hard by, the purring of the cat in the arms of Kitty Tynan
as, with fascinated eyes, she listened to a man tell the tale of a life
as distant from that which she lived as she was from Eve.

She felt more awed than curious as the tale went on; it even seemed to
her she was listening to a theme beyond her sphere, like some shameless
eavesdropper at the curtains of a secret ceremonial. Once or twice she
looked at her mother and at the Young Doctor, as though to reassure
herself that she was not a vulgar intruder. It was far more impressive
to her, and to the Young Doctor too, than the scene at the Logan Trial
when a man was sentenced to death. It was strangely magnetic, this
tale of a man's existence; and the clock which sounded so loud on the
mantelpiece, a