"And I'm sure Avis would wish that, too, and Bob also," declared her father. He had rather dreaded home-coming, but the ordeal proved pleasanter than he expected. Two men called together during the evening and Billy Marydrew, with Adam Winter, dropped in, that they might congratulate Jacob on his recovery.
Avis and Peter went about their own affairs, but Auna sat beside her father until he bade her leave them.
"I made this here man come in with me," explained William. "He weren't coming, but I said he'd be welcome for two reasons—firstly to wish you a friendly wish, which was in him to do, and secondly to see me home, because the night be blowing up for foul and I'm so light as a leaf nowadays; and if the wind thrust me in the river, there I should certainly bide."
They shook hands and Winter spoke.
"You know how much I've felt about this. It was a very terrible thing to fall out and——"
"Don't go back to it. Don't let it trouble you any more. How is the man? Does he understand that it was a bad thing to do? Does he understand that he and I have both been out of our minds and done bad things? Or he may argue, perhaps, that he was right to take the law into his own hands. Anyway what he did to me was a great deal less than what I did to you. I know—I know, Adam. It's one of the few blessings left that time can let me talk in this stark fashion to you. Where there's such forgiveness as yours to me, there's a great foundation for friendship. Humble enough on my side. But it would be well to know if Samuel has took your line in that matter and harbours no malice, or if I must be on my guard."
"He's long since forgotten all about it. He remembers no more than my bull remembers. He'll wonder to see you lame and treat you respectful, same as he did before."
"That's good then. There's compensations for a weak mind if it carries a weak memory, Adam. And yet, without memory, we can't mourn our sins and better our behaviour."
"That's why the beasts that perish don't get any forwarder, Jacob," explained William. "Memory be left out of them, save in small particulars. And so they just live, and their sorrow is a passing matter and their happiness not much more than a sense of comfort. And Sammy's terrible lucky in one thing, like all other lunies, that, though he pays the price of his wits in this world, he's a dead certainty for salvation in the next. You may be born without a mind, you see, but if you're a human, you can't be born without a soul; and though this world's blank for Samuel, in any high sense, his number's up for the Kingdom of Heaven, since he's so sinless as a jackdaw, for all his mischief."
"A deep subject," admitted Adam, "and I don't know as ever I looked at it like that, Billy; but comforting for certain to them that care for the soft, unfinished ones."