He was thoroughly tired. He could not remember ever experiencing such a battle as the one just passed; and it had taken all his strength. In the corner, the stranger had now begun to moan, faintly; but Oman made no move to go to him. Just now he felt no desire to help a creature who had so lately attempted his life. Rather, there was a new bitterness in him. Had it not been always thus—a return of evil for good? This was all that unselfishness or self-sacrifice had ever brought him. Where was the divine justice to be found? Where was that universal law of compensation? Alas! Experience was once more accomplishing its work, narrowing its victim down to the little present, blotting out all the breadth of view that reflection and solitude had brought. For many hours Oman sat there, musing bitterly, till the cloud-veiled sun was down, and night, still filled with the rush of tempest, advanced. Then, at last, he turned within, replenished his fire, and cooked himself a meal of rice. As he ate, he glanced over toward the stranger, who, however, made no sign. When he had finished, Oman crept quietly to the bed, and looked down at his charge, to see if he had need of anything. But he found the old man fast asleep. After a time he returned to his post in the doorway. He found the night changed. Through torn and shimmering mists, the golden moon came rolling up out of the hills, bringing with her a court of stars, and driving the heavier clouds away down the western slope of the sky. Peace had come upon the height. The ruin wrought by the storm was being atoned for now. It was the hour of Nature’s repentance. Oman looked, and his own soul grew calm. This scene was so familiar to him! How many times, in his long sojourn on the height, had he not gazed upon it thus, gloried in it, loved it? But to-night, when its mission had been accomplished, and he had been restored to tranquillity, he turned his thought to other things—one other thing:—a strange, foreboding sense of recognition of some of the words spoken by the wanderer: “The Asra ruby is mine own—given me in payment—” And it was Oman himself who involuntarily added, in thought, the last words that his charge had uttered: “Faces! Faces! Faces!” What were the faces rising round him here, in the firelit night? What pale ghosts of the long ago were taking shape? What was it now burning behind his brain, struggling to break the barrier of the past? Oman bent his head, and clasped it in his two hands, thinking in vain, yet ever with the sense that remembrance was imminent. He was at a high pitch of nervousness when the unwelcome voice reached his ears:—a voice faint, and weak, and low, as if it came out of the depths of the bygone years: “Hermit—art thou there?” With a passing shiver, Oman rose and went to the bed where the old man lay. As he approached, the stranger lifted one hand slightly, and murmured: