“It matters little,” said he, sitting down on the stairs, resting his elbows on his knees, and burying his face in his hands, “one part of the world or another; it’s all the same; dark enough to wish to be well out of it.”
“Gavin,” said I, sitting down on the stair beside him, “do you remember that you told me how terribly your back ached from carrying your knapsack and blanket on that long march?”
A dull, uninterested assent.
“What would have been most welcome, when the pain became intolerable?”
“To unload, of course;” his head still buried in his hands.
“At times, in the long march of life, I have borne a heavy, moral knapsack; and when the pain from its weight became intolerable, no words can tell the relief of unloading, and sharing the burden with some loving heart, with whom it was as safe and as sacred as with myself. Your heart, just now, is aching worse than ever did your back; might it not ease it to try the experiment?”
He raised his head quickly; fire enough in those eyes then.
“Ease it!” he said; “doesn’t it feel every day and every hour that it must burst, unless I tell what I am suffering? I walk among the men here, and they pass me as cold and stiff, when, God knows, I’m on fire inside; I’m burning up, burning up, here,” added he, pressing his hand on his brain.
This was enough. The buckles were unstrapped, the burden would follow.