"I am very far from despairing, Henry. You spoke lightly of our friendship a little while ago, and one time I should have agreed with you. But I know you better now, and the incredibility of this thing that you have done has been growing upon me. It's the one misshapen column in a fair temple. Won't you pull it down and set up another in its place,—a clean-cut pillar of uprightness, which will harmonize with the others?"
Jeffard stops short at the tree-bole, with his hand on Lansdale's shoulder.
"It has taken me five weeks to find out why you consented to come afield with me," he says. "It was to say this, wasn't it?"
"Just that," says Lansdale, and his voice is the voice of one pleading as a mother pleads. "Say you will do it, Henry; if not for your own sake or mine, for the sake of that which has brought us together here."
Jeffard has turned away again, but he comes back at that to stand before Garvin's advocate.
"It is a small thing you have asked, Lansdale," he says, after a time; "much smaller than you think. The pillar isn't altogether as crooked as it looks; there is something in the perspective. You know how the old Greek builders used to set the corner column out of the perpendicular to make it appear plumb. We don't always do that; sometimes we can't do it without bringing the whole structure down about our ears. But in this case your critical eye shall be satisfied. We'll go down to the mine in the morning and use Denby's wire. If Bartrow can find Garvin, you shall see how easily the dragon's teeth may be broken. Is that what you wanted me to say?"
Lansdale's answer is a quotation.
"'And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking ... that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.' I've seen my reward and felt of it; and yours will come a little later,—in a way you little dream of. Pass the tobacco, and let's have another whiff or two before we turn in. I'm too acutely thankful to be sleepy."
For a peaceful half-hour they sit before the glowing embers, smoking placidly while their talk drifts hither and yon over the spent sea of boyhood and youth. It is a heartening half-hour, and at the end of it Jeffard rises to get the blankets from the wagon. Lansdale elects to sleep at his tree-root, and he is rolling himself in his blanket when Jeffard says:
"How about the presentiment? Have we tired it out?"