"It would be a poor sort of reformation, Jock—" Drew was getting command of himself—"if it were only to get—her! You've got to get yourself, old man, before you'd dare ask any woman to care for you. I often think the best of us ask a good deal—on trust; but at least a man must know himself before he has a right to expect even—faith."
"Oh! I've worked all that out, Drew, I've been to Hillcrest to talk the beginnings over with a little lawyer fellow who's had my confidence all along. I'm going back where I fell, Drew, in the start. I'm going back there where the loss of her—the mother's laugh and song—will grip the hardest and where the antidote will be the easiest to get. I'm going to take only enough of the governor's money to keep me out of the filth of the gutter until I can climb on to the curb or—go to the sewer, see? But always there is going to be your sister above me. Just remember that—and if you can help her to think of me, once in—a while—"
"Filmer, until you climb up, you must not ask me to hold even one thought of my sister's for you; except—" and here Drew looked frankly in the anxious face—"except as the good fellow of—our Solitude."
"Thank you! That's all I meant. And if I pull up—and stay up—she, not I, will know how to use the money. She's got the heart that can reach down to the suffering, and hold little dying kids on her breast. If I go under, Drew, the money is going to her—anyway."
"Filmer!"
"That's all right, Drew. I know what I'm about. She'll brighten up all the dark places—and remember me in that way if in no other."
Long the two men looked at each other; then Drew extended his hand. Jock took it in a firm grip.
"Good night, Filmer, and God be with you!"
"I'm ready to start, I'll tramp back with you as far as the bungalow."
Jock dashed the crumbling, glowing logs with his foot, and left the fire dying, but safe. Then, gathering his travelling things together, he went out with Drew, closing the door behind him.