Tarred on by
the wind, the fire climbed from sunset to near dawn. It climbed until it
reached the feet of the eternal snows. Then one insulted mountain loosed
an avalanche, and then another and another, until the incredible cones
of fire were ridged with black.

Paul Armstrong threw himself upon the ground and slept when the fires
were miles and miles away. He awoke after many hours with an aching
sense of light upon his eyes. The sun was high already, and the skies
were clear. The valley and the mountains lay before him bare and black,
with many spirals of dove-coloured smoke rising thinly here and there.
And the man thought within himself:

'After great mischief, peace. In a single year the fire-weed will have
made this waste a fairy-land. The time will come when there will be left
no token of this desolation. Nature endures no lasting loss, and is the
soul less vital?'

And he believed the things it was ordained that he should believe, and
he bowed his head in prayer with tears of penitence and self-abasement.

'What is left to me?' he asked.

His father's voice spoke inwardly in answer, apart from his will,
outside his will, as it had spoken from the first.

'Duty!' said the voice. 'Bid the fire-flowers blossom in the wasted
spaces of your own soul.'

His tears gripped him at the throat with art almost intolerable anguish,
and with such a passion as no man can experience twice in life he
renounced his own despair.

THE END

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

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