"I shall reap where I have sown," says Jeffard steadily. "Latterly I have been living for one day,--the day when I can take you back to her in the good hope that she will forget what has been for the sake of what I have tried to make possible." Once more Lansdale's gaze is in the glowing heart of the fire, and the light in his eyes is prophetic. "Verily, you shall reap, Henry; but not in a field where you have sown. Don't ask me how I know. That's my secret. But out of all this will come a thing not to be measured by your prefigurings. You shall have your reward; but I crave mine, too. Will you give it me?" "If it be mine to give." "It is. Do justice and love mercy, Henry. That is the thing I've been trying to find words to say to you all these weeks." Jeffard lays the pipe aside and does not pretend to misunderstand. "Tell me what you would like to have me do." "I think you must know: find the man who drank of the bitter waters and went mad, and give him back that which you have taken from him." "Isn't there a possibility that I can do neither?" "I can help you to do the first,--and for the other I can only plead. I know what you would say: that the man had forfeited his right; that he tried to kill you; that by all the laws of man's inventing this money is yours. But God's right and your debt to your own manhood are above all these. As your poor debtor, I'm privileged to ask large things of you; can't you break the teeth of it and shake yourself free of the money-dragon?" Jeffard is afoot, tramping a monotonous sentry beat between the wagon and the fire. His rejoinder is a question. "Do you know where James Garvin is to be found?" "I don't, but Bartrow does." "Why didn't he tell me?" "Because Dick is merciful. The man is a criminal, and you could send him to the penitentiary." "And Dick thought--and you have thought--that I would prosecute him. It was the natural inference, I suppose,--from your point of view. The man who would rob his partner wouldn't stumble over a little thing like that. Will it help you to sleep the sounder if I say that vengeance isn't in me?--wasn't in me even in the white heat of it?" Lansdale nods assent. "I'm on the asking hand, and any concession is grateful. If you were vindictive about it, I'm afraid the major contention would be hopeless." "But as it is you do not despair?" "I am very far from despairing, Henry. You spoke lightly of our friendship a little while ago, and one time I should have agreed with you. But I know you better now, and the incredibility of this thing that you have done has been growing upon me. It's the one misshapen column in a fair temple. Won't you pull it down and set up another in its place,--a clean-cut pillar of uprightness, which will harmonize with the others?" Jeffard stops short at the tree-bole, with his hand on Lansdale's shoulder. "It has taken me five weeks to find out why you consented to come afield with me," he says. "It was to say this, wasn't it?"