The boy smiled wanly.
"That's what we're trying to do."
He pointed to the candle in its daubed bottle.
"Just to keep the light burning, Jed—just to keep its light fighting back the darkness. The little flame of that candle breaks the power of the black thing which would shut it in—like a heart being good and true in spite of the rotten body in which it beats. And when my body commences to want the old things—to want them, oh, so badly—I just think of this little candle here, calm and quiet and steady, sticking out of what was once a cesspool, a poison pot, and making a place in the night where men can see."
While a hundred could have been counted slowly they remained motionless, quiet, not a sound breaking the silence.
Then Jed began talking in a half-tone:
"I know, Young VB; I know. You've got time now to light it and nurse th' flame up so's it won't need watchin'—an' not miss things that go by in th' dark. Some of us puts it off too long—like a man I know—now. I didn't know him then—when it happened. He was wanderin' around in a night that never turned to day, thinkin' he knowed where he was goin', but all th' time just bein' fooled by th' dark.
"And there was a girl back in Kansas. He started after her, but it was so dark he couldn't find th' way, an' when he did—
"Some folks is fools enough to say women don't die of broken hearts. But—well, when a feller knows some things he wants to go tell 'em to men who don't know; to help 'em to understand, if he can; to give 'em a hand if they do see but can't find their way out—"
He stopped, staring at the floor. VB had no cause to search for identities.