“I’ve wondered about it a good deal, as I’ve lain here,” said the sick man. “It almost seems as if nothing in the world-scheme were so precious as suffering. Men feel that when they recall their early hardships. Dimly they see that nothing they’ve found later was of such value to them. Yes, yes, beside, the days of the struggle the days of the harvest are dull. And it’s this”—he crouched over the oilskin, and dropped his voice—“this incentive to the greatest struggle that men can embark upon—this is the Great Legacy I shall leave behind!” “But what,” she pointed to the thing he was hugging between gaunt arms, “what is in that?” “_The proofs_,” he whispered, and started when the word was out. It seemed to Hildegarde that he held the weather-beaten bundle tighter still, and still he put off telling what she wanted most to know. As if he couldn’t bring himself, after all, to yield the secret up. “Think,” he whispered. “We could set the world ringing with it, Ky. Only we mustn’t.” “Yes, yes, but you must!” Hildegarde half started to her feet. “No. Not after—I swore an oath, you see.” “To—” That motion of the wild head: “The One up yonder.” CHAPTER XXV “What One up yonder?” Hildegarde’s voice was as hushed as his own. “Kyome.” “Who is that?” “The god of the unknown North. Hadn’t you heard that in all the old lands, from Greece to Mexico, there was always an altar to the unknown god?” She nodded. “When men in their foolishness threw down those temples, the old gods fled to the farther countries. Last of all to the world’s waste places.” He held up one horrible hand, and made a grotesque motion of “Come nearer.” She obeyed. “The greatest of these gods of the unknown—he sat on a throne of ice at the top of the world. The others—they had found no rest from the men of the West. Behind the Great Wall of China we hunted them out. We forced our way to them through Japan ports. We let the garish day into the dim temples of Korea, and the gold terraces of holy Lhasa are trod by alien feet. But the uttermost North was all inviolate till I came. I made the kingdom mine. But now”—he lifted the maimed right hand like one taking oath—“now I abdicate. I will destroy my title-deeds. Fire! a little fire!” His hands fumbled among the shavings in the blanket, and feverishly he caught up the knife. “No, no. Let me,” she said. “I’ll do it for you. See, I can split the kindling straight down.” She strained to make good the boast. “Just a moment! Oh, but this kind of wood is tough! What is it? Not a piece of drift—so flat and smooth?” “Piece of a broken skee—my snow-shoe.” While she forced the sharp blade down, he was calling out, “Ky! D’you hear that fellow laughing at us?” The dog turned obedient, and both her pointed ears seemed to be pricking at the silence.