The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other’s aspects—saw, and shrieked, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Despair had written ‘Fiend.’”
There was no sound for a while when he finished. The padre sat motionless, his head bent. To him the picture drawn in these terse lines expressed a black inferno of human hopelessness into which he had never looked—the very apotheosis of the damned. He rose, came to where Gordon stood, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“My son,” he said gently, “there was one darkest hour for the world. But it was in that hour that light and hope for men were born. Every man bears a cross of despair to his Calvary. But He who bore the heaviest saw beyond. What did He say? Not my will, but Thine!”