“Give up the stage? Renounce the stage?”
His eyes came back to the money in his hand. Presently he folded it up, pressing the creases with his thin fingers, and slowly holding it out, shook his head saying,—
“Send it back.”
The ribbon of sunlight had crept further and further round until it stretched itself across the broad, white forehead, and we stood in greater awe than when the angel of death had hovered there. Suddenly before us a dazzling ray had flashed out from the black waste of that sinful life. The unbroken check went back to Canada.
A month later I was riding in the country. A purple light overhung the shadowy prairie, which stretched away, broad, level and without bound. Occasionally a wild bird rose up and darted with swift wings, seeking a resting place, for already the September moon waited the coming night. Nearer, the tall weeds raised themselves from the great, soundless ocean of grass, like the masts of receding vessels. A single wagon, the only object on all the void prairie, stood out bold and sharp against the bright line of the horizon, and clearly defined above the driver, high up on top of the hay, the figure of a man cut the sky. Even at that distance I knew it was Boydell.
Some one had given him a little money, and with renewed health and spirits he was going out of M——. Whither?
THE DEATH-WATCH.
