The sun had vanished, and the prolonged dusk of the northland was stealing from out the forest. At length Granger answered him: "It may be true, and if so, what follows?"
"Oh, nothing: only I thought I'd tell you this so that one man might not think too badly of me, if before long I should be called upon to die. I must have looked a horrid beast when I came to you last April."
Whether consciously or not, Granger nodded his head, as much as to say, "You did. Most certainly you did."
His companion broke into a harsh laugh. "The Reverend Druce Spurling! How d'you like the sound of it? That's what I might have been to-day, and a fat lot you care about it."
To Granger, as he listened, there had come the painful knowledge, bearing out the accusation that he had never cared for the inward things of men, that this was the first scrap of confession which Spurling had ever let fall in his presence. Why, up to that moment he had not heard a word about his mother, and had certainly never credited him with a pronounced religious instinct.
Yes, perhaps that statement, which had sounded so exaggerated at first, was true; and he was a hard and selfish man. Up to now he'd excused himself on the score of his superior sensitiveness and ideality. Probably it was this same error which Père Antoine, in gentler manner, had tried to point out, when he said, "You will never help yourself, or the world, by merely being sad. No man ever has. It is because of your flight from sadness that you have met with all your dangers. All your life you have spent in striving to escape from things which are sad." His thoughts travelled back to those earlier days, when he'd poured out his troubles to Spurling, and told him all about himself; and always with the assurance that he would be understood and would gain sympathy. John Granger as he had been then, now seemed like a complaining child to himself. He was certain that, were he to be met by that old self to-day, he would have no patience with him. But Spurling had had patience.
So, when all was said and done, he must consider himself a pretty worthless fellow; and, after all, Spurling, despite his blood-stained hands, was probably the better man.
"Why Spurling failed to become a parson"—a strange topic for thought and conversation this, on the Last Chance River at nightfall!
But Spurling was speaking again, timidly and half to himself. "Suppose God should brand a mark on our foreheads for every crime which we have perpetrated, I wonder what kind of beasts we should appear to one another then?"
Turning his head, in order that his face might not be seen, Granger replied, "Much the same kind of beasts, I suspect, as we appear to one another now." Then, speaking more hurriedly, "It wasn't to talk of these things, and to ask me that question, that you required me to come with you to some place where we might be by ourselves. Tell me, what is it that you want me to do for you? You were good to me once, and I'm willing to help you in any way that is honourable, and that isn't too dangerous."