The Law-bringers/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
"THIS PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVENTURE"
The thin-gnawed rind of a red sun showed just above the horizon in the South. It lifted little higher in these days of the silky swishing and the colourless gleam of the Northern Lights possessed the world for all but three hours of mid-winter, and the strange pallor of a long night full daily.
Andree stopped in the trail and turned to look at that red curve before it dropped again. She could look straight into it without blinking, and Dick watched her as she stood, drawn to her full height, with the hood pushed back from her face. The world was colourless, motionless, soundless. In a little while their breath would begin to crackle with the frost as it had done last night. Just now the two, heated through a long march without a pause, were glad to stand a moment to take breath again.
In the lines the huskies leaned forward, ears pricked and tongues dripping. To the south a yellow snow-cloud banked up toward the zenith. Against the wide sweep of snow Andree's small young figure stood lithe and vigorous, instinct with life. But her face was sad: sadder than Dick had seen it since he came to her in the cabin of the "Rocket."
"What is it, Andree?" he said, and she moved instantly, smiling at him.
"I did wonder—this place where there is no life and no light—is this what it will be like to be dead, Dick?"
He came very close to her and took her hand.
"Do you often think of that, Andree?" he asked.
"Non. Oh, non. I cannot think all the to-morrows, they are too many. But—it seemed so, perhaps."
"Forget about it;" he patted her hand gently. "The sun will come again to-morrow, you know. And we will see it more every day as we go south."
"But it is not the sun I did know. And these are not the same stars, Dick."
"I know. But we will get back to them again."
"Oh, oui," she said. And then she looked at Selkirk and the fat Esquimaux boy swinging ahead round the bend in the river. "It is to-night that we make arrive to Fort Macpherson?" she asked.
"To-night. Unless you stand here too long. Are you tired, Andree? You are such a splendid musher that I sometimes forget you're only a girl."
"I am not tired." She looked at him gravely, with that last red light on her face. "I do not know what it is, parceque je suis très content. I did not think ever in my life to have you near me for so long time, Dick. What you want to put your hand up that way for?"
"You are so very pretty that I think I am afraid of your blinding me, Andree."
The joy shown over her face suddenly. Her eyes sparkled, and she laughed, putting her hands up against his neck.
"Ma foi!" she cried. "I am glad. Now I do forget that ever I hated you. I want to be so pretty always when you do look at me, Dick."
"Don't! Take your hands down! I have told you before not to touch me!"
She let him go instantly.
"Eh, bien," she said, with a little sigh, and Dick looked at her, frowning.
"Why are you always obedient to me and not to the others?" he said.
"Why—if I am good perhaps one day you will love me and kiss me again—if I am good," she said.
In that fast-fading light he took her face between his hands, turning it up to him.
"You have broken very many men in your time," he said. "Do you want to break me, too, Grange's Andree?"
"I want you to kiss me again," she said simply.
"And can't you understand that if I did—No. I can't kiss you any more. And I can't wait here any more or we'll freeze. Come on. It will be late now before we get to the Fort."
The sun went down, and through the long pale dusk which is not like any light anywhere else they swung forward with the sturdy little huskies trotting strongly. The smell of far-off snow was in the air, damping the ringing chill of the frost. The pallid width of the river seemed rimless, and ahead vague ghostly shadows danced and ran as the Lights overhead flickered up and sank back. And then, on the naked bank of the Peel, came the red glow of the lights of Fort Macpherson.
Hensham prided himself on his even temper, but he was upset that night.
"It's a—a devilish thing that you've got to do, Heriot," he said. "’Pon my soul, I don't know how you have the heart—to stand up to it."
From the big chair by Hensham's stove Dick looked up in amused mockery.
"Why?" he asked.
"Why?" Hensham exploded. "Lord, man; she's lovely. And that way she has of"
"I see. Sin is only sin in the old and ugly. Therefore Guinevere didn't sin. Helen didn't sin. Judith didn't sin. Salome—perhaps we may grant a little license to Salome. She did as her mother told her. But I see your drift"
"I don't know what you mean," began Hensham, reddening.
"No? But I know what you mean. We don't interpret the person through the sin, you see. We are too apt to interpret the sin through the person. That is one of the fundamental faults in what someone describes as 'this psychological adventure called man.' We let Romance run away with us. Because a woman is pretty she can't be wicked."
"You know I don't mean that. But this isn't quite the same thing"
"That particular case never is. And every case is the particular case, isn't it? Hensham?"
"Good Lord," said Hensham, walking through the room, heatedly. "Haven't you a heart in your body at all, man?"
"That is my own private business, isn't it?"
"The deuce knows." Hensham looked at him gloomily, "I doubt if any one thing on earth is a man's private business only."
"It is until he is weak enough to show that he possesses that thing," said Dick; and a little later, in his own room, he said it again, with a laugh of contempt at himself. For he had been using these arguments on himself very often of late, and he knew the value of them.
Two mornings after Andree came to the door of his room and talked to him as he twisted and knotted the thongs of his outer moccasins. She was all ready for the continuance of the journey, and animation sparkled in her as she chattered, taking no heed of his curt replies. At last she ran to him, sliding her arms about him as he stooped.
"I do love you," she whispered. "Dick, Dick; je t'aime. Ah! Je t'aime."
His hands ceased their work. He did not move.
"You know how cruel I am being to you, Andree," he said.
"Bien! C'est toi. If you do make it so—still it is you," she said.
He was silent for a moment. Then he lifted her off and stood upright, looking out straight before him.
"What is it?" she asked. Then she touched him, half-frightened. "Dick? Is it that you are seeck?"
"No." He looked at her sharply, and then looked away again. "No. I was just deciding something, Andree."
"And is it now made sure?" she asked.
He looked at her again, speaking slowly.
"Yes," he said. It is now made sure."
Hensham himself went with them to the edge of the winter portage into Arctic Red River.
"You'll do it easily in the day," he said. "Only thirty-five miles, and the trail tramped already. You certainly have a first-class team, too."
His friendliness seemed forced, and he was in haste to be gone. Dick watched him swing over the snow-hummocks that hid the little naked houses of the Fort, and then he turned to Andree with a smile.
"You must follow me very closely and not talk at all for a while," he said. "For we are going round past Macpherson again, and on to the winter trail to Dawson, Andree."
"Why?" she asked, half-startled.
"Because I can't take you to Fort Saskatchewan," he said, in sudden passion. "I can't do it. I cannot 'make it so.' No man could with your face near him. I will get you through the Yukon somehow, and bury myself at the same time."
"But one cannot be bury while one is live."
"Oh, yes, one can. Plenty of men are buried while they are alive. What are you looking like that for?"
"I do not like you with that talk in your voice," she said.
He drew her to him and kissed her.
"Is that better? Now—mush, Andree. Quick. I must get out of sight of Macpherson as soon as possible."
He winced as he said the words. They drove his position home to him so sharply. For the rest of his life now he would have to get out of sight of all things which represented law and order as soon as possible.
Keeping in the shelter of the little rough snow-hummocks and the sparse vegetation they crossed the Peel; passed the barracks again, and struck on to the Peel Portage which led by wild and rugged mountain ways into the Yukon. Dick knew the entrance of the Portage only, and the later trail not at all. But he had a good map and a compass, and it was almost certain that he could pick up an Indian as guide later on, even if he should lose the trail, which was not likely. He had a genius for finding his way, and there were reasons now why he should not make any mistakes. He had plenty of provisions, and he and Andree were in perfect health. Therefore, there was no danger to be feared except from the barracks. He smiled grimly as he swung along, breaking trail with a heavy lurching step. Hensham might talk windily enough; but he was not the man to fling away reputation and position to do this thing which Dick was now doing. But there was no pride in Dick that he was doing it. He went on with face set and strong, lunging steps, making his stops short and infrequent. He knew that he dared not stop. He dared not think. And yet, despite himself, that keen, unflagging brain of his would think.
He believed that he had faced this matter fully enough in that until the future becomes the present, he had not realised the last two months. Now he knew, as every man knows, what it meant to him. The fire of Andree's words and her beauty maddened his hot blood, and he knew that it would do so again. And he knew that the chill of common-sense would continue to thrust in between, congealing that hot blood as it was doing now. What was it that he meant to do? Why did he mean to do it? Andree would never understand; never realise. She swung after him as unconcernedly now as she had done all the way up from Herschel. Life meant no more to her than the day. Death meant no more. It was a vague thing which she would not think of; which she could not think of because all greatness had no meaning for her. She was stupid, utterly and entirely stupid, and he knew it. And those mocking words which he had said to Hensham about her beauty were true, and he knew that also.
Without that inconsequent alluring wild-wood bloom of her no man would ever have looked twice at Grange's Andree. He would not. If Andree had been like Moosta to look at he would not be doing this now. Life had hardened him too much through the work which he had had to do for ordinary pity to obscure his judgment.
What was controlling him now? It was not pity. It was not love. It was not a sense of justice. It was just that lawless call of the will-o'-the-wisp again. It was the old breakdown. That it would not be for more than the moment he knew well.. There was neither rule nor convention in this world would ever bind Grange's Andree. And he would not keep her with him and guard her. He knew himself too well to think that. And if he let her go what was there for her then? Tempest had said: "I hold you responsible for her till the end of time." Tempest had said: "Death will be easier for her than life." If Tempest who loved her had chosen so for her; if the natural law of punishment for crime had chosen so for her, by what right did he interfere?
He tramped on, breaking trail grimly, with the dull dusk shoulders. He did not notice the snow. He was seeing into his heart with that piercing self-knowledge which seldom failed him, although he as seldom walked by its light. He had never had anything but contempt for the man who dared not face the sting in order to snatch the honey of life. He had known keenly what he meant to give up for Jennifer. But the whole of his mind and body was eager and resolved to do it. He was giving these things up now for Grange's Andree. He was wrecking his life for no great all-conquering passion; no sense of justice; no honest unselfishness. He was doing it because he was weak; because there was nothing in the core of him which could stand against idle temptation.
The snow thickened. It hung on his eyelashes, half-blinding him. The trail was growing more hilly and rough, and night was closing in with a bleak wind. But not once in the short halts which he made did he speak to the girl behind him. She did not mind. That kiss had filled up her world for her again, and she would have trod after him beside the dogs until weariness forced her to her knees. She wanted nothing but the sight of those broad, straight-held shoulders and the memory of that kiss on her mouth.
Where a few snow-heavy pines made a thicker blurr close at hand Dick stopped with a jerk, suddenly realising the world around him again.
"We must camp here, Andree," he said shortly, and began to break the branches, knocking the snow out of them, and kicking it aside from the earth. He spoke little that night, and repulsed all Andree's overtures. And long after Andree had curled herself in her deerskin robes at the back of the tent Dick sat with his back against the sled and watched the smoky fire and thought.
His work seemed hateful to him now. The past in which he had loved Jennifer and Tempest seemed hateful. He wanted to cut himself free from it as he had done with other pasts. Against the whirling snow Tempest's face shaped itself, with the square strong forehead and the sword of justice in his eyes. He laughed at it. Through his effort to help Tempest this tangle had come around his feet. Who was Tempest to interfere with him now? And if Jennifer had loved and trusted him as Andree did he would not be here. Who was she to interfere with him now? Then he suddenly realised that she did not interfere. She seemed very far-off and dim. The sound of her voice, the personality of her, the very features of her face eluded him when, with a start of half-alarm, he tried to fix them in his mind as clearly as they had always lived there. At each effort they evaded him more completely. He knew how common such lapses of memory are. He knew that the strain of his mind and the weariness of his body were partly accountable. And yet, with that elusive superstition which moves more or less in every man's blood, he felt that it was a final thing. He had denied and defied her, and she had left him.
He got up, walking out of the tent to take the snow on his face. The huskies, curled nose to tail, glanced up, bright-eyed. But he did not see them.
"Jennifer!" he cried, and the word fell dead without meaning. "Jennifer!" he said again. And then he stood still with hands clenched up.
Ever since he had left her he had fought the hold which she had on him. He had cursed it and defied it, mad with himself because he loved her still. And now she had gone. She had gone. His tired, half-dizzy brain fumbled with the thought. He flung his hands out. "By God," he said. "I have got to go back to you again. I have got to go back to you, Jennifer!"
In the yellow morning the snow fell still. The trail by which they had come would be half obliterated already. But it never would be obliterated in his mind. There was feverish haste in him now to turn back. And then, as he came from the tent, Andree met him brilliant-eyed and brilliant-cheeked.
"Ah, Dick. I did dream you were away," she cried, and flung her arms close round his neck. "I do love you. I do love you," she whispered. For a moment Dick stood still, with eyes set and face white. Then he freed himself, stepping back with a little smile.
"I wonder what you would think if you knew what it is that you love, Grange's Andree," he said. "Supposing that you could ever think or ever know—or ever love, perhaps. And I wonder what you will say when I tell you that we must go back to Fort Saskatchewan after all."
She went red, then white. His repulse had roused her temper, and fury and terror swept her like the wind on a harp.
"I will not," she screamed. "I will not. You can make me keel, but I will not."
He moved past her and began to kick up the tent-pegs.
"Get your things together," he said. "And be quick."
"I will not," she screamed again.
He made no answer. He struck the tent, rolled it, and stowed the cooking-box and the shovel and axe on the sled. The snow blew in his face, and the trail would be lessening each moment, and in this heavy storm he could see no land-marks. Andree stood with her blue hands clenched up, and the snow wet on her face. Then she hurled herself down full-length, sobbing, and beating the snow into spray about her. Dick left his work and went to her, recognising grimly that just retribution had caught him very soon. But it was long before he could get her on her feet, because he would not employ the only method which she wanted. Wisdom told him to stay in camp until the storm broke. Irritated temper told him that he could not sit still for twenty or thirty hours with Andree. He got away at last, with Andree beside the sled. She snapped at him like a husky when he spoke to her, and he went to the lead in silence. Among the pines and the rough spurs the winding trail was difficult to follow. Drifts blocked it; and the wind which he had kept on his left cheek began to blow in whirlwinds round them, and the trail was gone. But he would not believe that he could lose himself on this comparatively easy piece of track, and until the dogs were too weary to go further he plodded on in the deepening snow, making camp at last almost, as he guessed, within sight of Macpherson.
Utter exhaustion and sullen anger kept them both silent that night, and Dick slept like a log, waking sometimes in the dim half-light which was all the day gave now. For, though south from Herschel by more than two hundred miles, they were still well within the Arctic Circle, and at Herschel the sun would have ceased to lift above the horizon at all. The dark snow-shadow was lessened by the strong bitter wind that tore through it; and Dick went out, swaying against the blast, and drawing his furs tight round him, to take his bearings. In the unearthly pallor everything looked unnatural. But to Dick it was worse than that. It was unfamiliar. These hooded shapes round him were higher ranges than he had passed; the deep ravine on his left was new; and endless misty slope up which he had probably come in last night's storm was not on the Macphersan trail. At some sharp bend in the trail he had overshot it, and he would have to work back and forth over the ground until he found it. This did not lighten the anger which had gone to bed with him, and he called Andree roughly; and, receiving no answer, strode into the tent, jerking away her pile of deerskin robes.
They were cold and empty, and he went out hurriedly, shouting her name incessantly. The rugged mountain-flanks and snow-swathed distances flung it back at him insolently, and in the following silence terror seized on him. Andree had run away from him; run in her fury or her grief straight into those eternal huge solitudes where she would be no more than a bird blown out to sea on a windy night. He looked round for her snow-shoe tracks, found them where the storm whirled up the powdery snow, fed the dogs and himself, struck camp and prepared to follow her. Had he been certain of his own position he would have gone on to Macpherson for help. But as matters stood he dared not waste time. He believed that she would not go far. The loneliness would soon call her back to him, and in his wrath he knew that he would want to strike her when she came.
With the bleak wind buffeting him and his face cut by the sandy snow-particles he followed up to a bare scrap that launched itself against the sky. She had gone further than he expected. Then, on the snow-wreathed rim of it, he flung himself back with a sharp gasp. Grange's Andree had indeed gone further than he expected. The smudged snow and broken twigs on the edge of the scarp attested it. Dick was unnerved for a moment only. Then he climbed a spruce that lifted near by, hacking off the branches with all the force which he dared put into the brittle steel. He left it at last, a two-winged lobstick, such as the Indians use, and turned, seeking a way down the hill-flank. From below that landmark would give his position. It was not likely that Andree would be killed by the fall into soft snow. But it was possible that she might be smothered, and it was very certain that she would be starved if he did not find her in time.
It was on the second evening that he forced his way through a narrow-snow-choked gut into that ravine where Andree had fallen. The storm raged still, and it was more than likely that he would not get out by the way he had come; and when, along the ravine-bottom, he saw something flutter, like a leaf in the wind, he stood still, grasping his whip and taking long breaths through his nostrils. If Andree had come to him then he would have beaten her; but it was an hour before his shouts and chasing brought her to him, reeling like a drunken man, and with wolfish eyes, and high cheekbones showing. Silently he put food into her hands, watching her tear it and swallow it savagely. Once she looked up, saw his face, and looked away again. Then she jerked off her snow-shoe.
"Broke," she said, and handed it to him.
He spliced it with a tough twig of hemlock, called up the dogs, and turned back the way he had come. He took less notice of her than if she had been a dog, and she followed him, trembling, yet defiant; shaken with her grief and her misery. At the gut he stopped. There was no way out there any more. For a few minutes he stood, staring round on the steep rock-walls misty in the drifting snow. Then he said:
"Are you hurt anywhere, Andree?"
"Non," she said with quivering lips.
"Can you keep on walking?"
"Oui."
A little longer he stood, looking round him. Then, with a half-sigh, as though he knew the chance of that choice, he left the gap and went down the ravine.
Dick knew little of mountain-work; and in these fierce storms, and this deep snow which hid the lie of the rivers, the little he knew was worthless. By his compass he worked east when ravines or broken ledges of rock or impassable mountains permitted it. But day by day he grew to know that want of food was going to call the time before the east he looked for was won. Through the days that swelled to a week, to a fortnight, he took no notice of Andree. His own bitter anger and despair blackened the world for him beyond all pity and mercy.
Other men had disgraced the uniform they wore. Other men had been privately branded among their fellows. Dick had had no pity for them. Now men would have no pity for him. Whether his body were found or not, he would be recognised as a traitor and a deserter. He had no business off the Mackenzie route, and no man could get lost on the Mackenzie. If he had left that trail he had left it for some ill-doing, and all men would know it. All men would be ready to blacken his name—the name of the brilliant lone-patrol man who had thrown away his honour and the honour of the Force for an Indian girl. All men would know. And they would laugh. Andree, plodding silent behind him, wondered vaguely at his look and tone when he had to speak to her. But it was not until the night when he killed the first dog that she broke down.
"Dick," she cried. "Dick. I make sorry. Oh—I sorry. Dick—love me."
He turned from the kettle where he boiled the meat. The dogs slunk round him, licking their lips after their unholy meal, and he looked gaunt and cruel and lean as they.
"You have no need to be sorry," he said. "You may find it an easier death than the other. And you have revenged yourself on me."
"But I do not understand. Oh, Dick, be kind to me or I will make die."
"You surely understand that we are both going to die in any case. It can make no difference whether I am kind to you or not."
He brought her the food, and she took it in silence. She was afraid of him, but not of anything else. Life had come to mean to her nothing but a stumbling on behind that swinging figure as it had come to mean to Dick nothing but a horror of the disgraced name which he must leave behind him. The wind beat her, or the sun dazzled, or the frost scarred her skin; and always the weight of the snow drew at her knees until one day it drew her down into it and she lay still. Dick was shaking her when she came back to understanding again, and she believed that his eyes were softer. But it might have been that her dulled senses made them seem so.
"It would have been kinder to leave you there, Grange's Andree," he said. "But I have never been kind to you, have I?"
"Peut-être one day you be kind again," she said, and fell into step once more.
That day came when only two dogs hauled the sled which held little more than the kettle, the deer-skin robes, and the raw hides which Dick gave the famished animals to chew on at a halt. It was the Indian in Andree which had kept her up so long. But the more volatile French blood was failing. It gave way at last when, on a gentle slope by a thick clump of firs, her courage failed, and she slid down in the snow.
Something which he did not understand made Dick turn. Then he went back to her, dropping the harness with which he helped the dogs to pull. She looked up at him—gladly, as he thought.
"No more, Dick," she said. "No more."
He gathered her in his arms and carried her into the comparative warmth of the spreading firs. Here he made camp; lighting a large fire, and wrapping her in the deer robes.
"Mais—j'ai froid," she whispered; and he drew her close into his arms beside the fire, although there was little heat in his starved body to strengthen hers. She smiled slightly, with her eyes shut, and he looked down on her unflinchingly.
The men who had loved her would not have recognised Grange's Andree now. Hunger and privation had done their work. The dog's meat had caused sores to break out on the skin of both, and their lips were cracked deeply, and their skin peeling in places. But on the girl's face was a content that did not show in the man's. Dick remembered that portfolio full of Andree's glowing youth, and for the moment he felt glad. They would live long after the trail had taken both painter and painted. In his arms Andree stirred, looking up with those wide eyes that had lost their coquetry at last.
"It makes so dark," she whispered.
"It will soon be light for you, Andree." His words broke with a sudden jar of amaze and anger. That was Jennifer's creed; never his. He had no belief in anything beyond this life which he and Andree had sold so dearly.
"I cannot rest." She spoke in French, stirring fretfully. "I am so tired, and I cannot rest." She plucked at the folds of the deerskin. "That's it," she said, and for a moment her voice was stronger. "Take it away, Dick. It is too much the wild life. It is the deer that run and run and never be tired. It will not let me go. It is too live. Take it off, Dick."
Dick obeyed. He understood how the wild nature in her was having its last struggle. She smiled, feeling his arms closer round her.
"That better," she murmured. "I do love you, Dick."
"I know, Andree," he said, very low.
For a long while she lay silent. The cold was freezing into Dick, numbing his brain and tingling along his limbs. The virility in him rebelled against it, and he heard his voice speaking sharply.
"I won't die," it said. "By God! I won't die."
Then he saw that Andree was looking at him wistfully. He understood, and he stooped his head, and kissed her twice and again.
"Ah!" she said, with a long sigh of happiness. One shiver ran through her; her still face twitched once. And presently he rose and wrapped her again in the deerskin which would trouble her wild heart no more.
Beside the fire he stood still, blowing on his numbed fingers and holding them to the fitful blaze. And between the heavy boles of the firs he saw a shadow pass. The blood rushed to his temples, blinding his eyes. Was it help at last? The shadow passed again. It seemed vaguely familiar. What was that connection in his brain between the night of death on which he had first heard the name of Grange's Andree and this hour when he had seen her for the last time? It was a threat of some kind—and then he remembered that big Irishman who had died on the Moon-Dance. O'Hara had promised to come back to the man who spoke ill of Grange's Andree, and he was keeping his word.
Dick stood still, pressing his hands over his eyes. The part of his brain which was still clear understood that this fantasy was born of that nerve-connection and of the weakness of his body only. But he did not know how long he was going to believe that. In a sudden spasm of terror he dropped his hand to the revolver in his belt. But he did not pull it out. All his life he had denounced that way out of trouble as cowardice. He had betrayed and broken and destroyed enough. He would not let go that last hold on manhood while any power in him could help it.
But ever after that day he went on with O'Hara stalking him.
The mercilessness of this great Northland which he had served so long became a tangible thing to him now. He had been her lover through many golden moonlights and many sunny days, and at last she had turned on him, mocking his puny struggles, watching the desperate hope which struggled for breath, and quenching the sparks of his life, one by one. Scarp and bluff and rocky ridge took shapes that bowed and gibbered at him; wind whistled elfin cries through the dark. Solitude had never seemed so awful and so relentless until he heard one thin voice piping incoherencies into it and traced that voice back to his own lips. This shock brought him back for a moment to realisation that he was still walking, although it was many, many centuries since Andree died; many, many centuries since he had had anything to eat. He tried to recollect what had happened to the sled and the two remaining dogs, standing still to steady his reeling brain for the effort. And then O'Hara came near and he hurried on.
Never in all these centuries could he see O'Hara fully. Sometimes he would stop and turn sharply, but the man was always just beyond the edge of eyesight. And yet he never failed to drop in close behind as soon as Dick went on. He was the only thing real in this whirling world of shadows, and presently he ceased to be O'Hara. It was the hound of his self-will and his unbelief and his evil passions which chased him in the shape of O'Hara, and fear lest that hound should catch him lying down kept him on his feet. He threw away his coat, his mitts, everything which meant weight. He did not realise cold or weariness any longer, and yet he would have fallen down and died a hundred times but for the dogging thing behind him.
It chased him on, reeling and stumbling and muttering; more afraid of that hound generated by his own sins than he had ever been afraid of his life. Whether the days passed or only hours he could not tell. Once he heard his voice calling again, sharpened by 'the stress of ultimate need.
"Lord have mercy upon us," it said. "Christ have mercy upon us."
They were the old prayers of his boyhood, sounding again from lips and heart long unfamiliar with them. How his small bare knees used to ache on the hard church cushions, and how the bees used to hum in the lilacs beyond the window
"Lord have mercy upon us. Christ have mercy upon us"
And then O'Hara came very close to his shoulder, and the nameless dread chased him over a little hill and into a fir coppice where a fire blazed, searing his aching eyes. Then a dog sprang out, and he snatched at it, and fell over it, and lay still.