"Shall I pour some?" he asked. Raridan had moved his arms slightly and groaned as Wheaton bent close to him. Wheaton detached the cup from the bottom of the flask and poured some of the brandy into it. The bishop, motioning him to stand ready with it, raised Raridan gently, and together they pressed the silver cup to his lips. "That will do. I think he swallowed a little," said the bishop. "Bring wood, if you can," he said, "and make a fire here." Raridan's head was growing hot under his touch, and he continued to lave it gently with the wet handkerchief. There was a shed at the back of the house where wood had been kept in the old days of the Poindexter ascendancy, and Wheaton, glad of an excuse to get away from the prostrate figure on the long table, went stumbling through the hall to find this place. There was a terrible silence in the old house,--a silence that filled all the world, a silence that could not be broken, it seemed to him, save by some new thing of dread. There beyond the prairie, day would break soon in the town where he had striven and failed,--not the failure that proceeds from lack of opportunity or ability to gain the successes which men value most, but the failure of a man in self-mastery and courage. He felt his soul shrivel in the few seconds that he stood at the door looking across the windy plain,--like a dreamer who turns from his dreams and welcomes the morning with the hope that his dream may not prove true. He drew the doors together and turned to go on his errand, lighting a match to get his bearings, when a sound on the stairway startled him; there was a figure there--the wan, frightened face of Grant Porter looked down at him. He had forgotten the boy, whom Saxton had left in the hall above. Grant shrank back on the stairs, not recognizing him. It seemed to Wheaton that there was something of loathing in the boy's movement, and that always afterward people would shrink from him. "Is that you, Grant?" he asked. The boy did not answer. "It's all right, Grant," he added, trying to throw some kindness into his voice. "You'd better stay upstairs, until--we're ready to go." The boy turned and stole back up the stairway, and Wheaton, encouraged by the sound of his own voice, brought wood and kindled it with some straw in the dining-room fireplace. "Let us try the brandy again," said the bishop. Again Wheaton poured it, and they forced a little between the lips of the stricken man. Raridan's face, as Wheaton touched it with his fingers, was warm; he had expected to find it cold; he had a feeling that the man lying there must be dead. If only help would come, Raridan might live! He would accept everything else, but to be a murderer--to have lured a man to his doom! The bishop did not speak to him save now and then a word in a low tone, to call attention to some change in Raridan, or to ask help in moving him. The dry wood burned brightly in the fireplace and lighted the room. The bishop asked the time.