"Yes, Mr. Devant, and thank you! You're not an old man, I sincerely wish that you might some day, well, you understand—not forget exactly, but get another trial here!"
"Too late for that, Dick. Can't you stay over night?"
"No. I'm going to the Hills. I've some last things to do there."
"And to-morrow, Dick?"
"I'm going to Katharine!" The two men looked keenly into each other's eyes.
"I'll meet you then at the train, my boy, at 7.50. I've business in the city. I always put up at the Holcomb; look me up after you've seen Katharine."
"Good night, Mr. Devant, and again thank you!"
Devant walked with Thornly to the outer door, and then to the windswept piazza. "It's sharp to-night," he said; "I'll soon have to give up Bluff Head. Davy's Light has got it all its own way to-night, not a star or moon to rival its beauty. A time back I fancied one evening that the Light failed me. It was only for a few moments I imagined it, but it gave me quite a jog. I suppose it was the state of my nerves; one can rely upon Davy. He's a great philosopher in his way. His lamp is his duty; his lamp and that poor crippled wife of his who has just died. Davy is one of the few men I've met, Dick, who seems to have played the game fair and has never tried to comfort himself with the hope of going back. 'I'm ready for the next duty,' he said to me the other day with his old rugged face shining; 'there's always another duty ready at hand, when you drop one as finished.'"
The master of Bluff Head watched the straight young figure fade into the night. Then he turned again to Davy's Light.
"The weight of a dead duty," he muttered. "That's what anchors a man! It isn't in the order of things to trust a man with a new duty, when he failed with the last. There isn't any light to guide a man that's anchored by a dead duty."