‘I did all the thinking about him that I shall ever give to him again, yesterday,’ said Michael, trenchantly. ‘Do you suppose I spent all yesterday shut up in that room without coming to some definite conclusions upon matters in general and in particular? That is the answer I mean him to have, and that is the answer I shall send him.’ Roger had been far more struck than he would have cared to confess, with Gilbert’s appeal. He felt as if confessing it would impeach his loyalty to his friend, and he was all Michael’s—heart and soul. But he was a man with a reasonable head too, and he could not thrust out the feeling, though he was angry with himself for having it, that Michael was unjust, even though the object of his injustice were so great a sinner as Gilbert. Yesterday, Roger had thought no punishment could be terrible enough for Gilbert and his ‘sneaking;’ now the punishment was beginning, and he found himself almost ready to plead for mercy for the criminal. ‘Michael,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘have you the right to do it?’ ‘Yes, I have,’ replied Michael, his face growing terribly hard and set again. ‘Nothing that I do to him now can be wrong.’ Roger paused, looking at his friend. In his mind were the words, ‘until seventy times seven,’ but he had not the courage to utter them. In the abstract, and as a Christian precept and command, doubtless they were right, but Michael was his friend; Michael had been so fearfully, so stupendously wronged and cheated, and by his own brother. Was he to plead Gilbert’s cause to Michael? The idea seemed monstrous. Make it right? What could make right or alter that which he had done, cunningly and secretly, against the brother who had trusted him? ‘Put yourself in his place—in Michael’s place,’ said Roger to himself. ‘Michael must be right. And yet—what a cursed thing to have reared its head between two brothers!’ ‘You will do what you—please’ (he was going to have said, ‘what you think right,’ but he instinctively felt that that would not have been the true expression). ‘I know I would give my right hand if it could be different.’ ‘I know you would, but it never can and never will,’ said Michael, folding and sealing his letter; and within a quarter of an hour it was on its way to Thorsgarth. ‘Are you going far to-day?’ the doctor asked Michael at breakfast. He would have given a good deal if the young man would have professed himself unable to stir, and so would have given him an opening for sympathy and condolence. But the young man did nothing of the kind. ‘Yes,’ he answered at once; ‘a good way. I shall not be back to lunch. I shall get that at the Brydges. Then I have to go on to Cotherstone, but I shall be back to dinner; and then,’ he added, ‘I must really try to get to Balder Hall. It is ages since I was there.’ CHAPTER X THE PROCESS OF ANNEALING