“I am entered upon the third phase,” he said, “the third and the last. The time is brief. I hear already the first faint lappings of the waters of oblivion in my ears. But I have acquired a store of knowledge. I went out in anguish and bewilderment; I return in self-security. If only the strength be given to my right hand in these last days I shall commence author.”
“Will you write in the book, beloved one?” said the old man, whose enfeebled frame had now scarce the power to lift the great volume from the shelf.
The young man looked the pages through with a patient scrutiny.
“There are many blank pages,” he said. “There are many to be filled.”
“Their number is infinite,” said the old man. “As long as our dynasty continues there will always be a page to be filled.”
“Yet he who fails to write therein,” said the young man, “places a term to the dynasty, does he not, my father?”
“Verily, beloved,” said his father, “it is written so.”
“I must go out into the wilderness again, my father,” said the young man with the new glamour in his large bright eyes. “It may then be given to me to write in the book.”
From this day forth the young man spent his outdoor hours in many and strange places, without pain, without trepidation, without his previous hurry of the spirit. He walked fearlessly among the crowded streets, reading the faces of those he found therein. Sometimes he would go afield and enter the country lanes and the woodland places and read the face of Nature.
Under the cover of the darkness his friend Dodson would sometimes tap upon the shutters of the shop. The young man would immediately leave his books, for he had returned to those companions of his early days, and would go forth with his friend into the streets of the great city. On the side of each there was an odd fear: James Dodson would never venture abroad upon these excursions without turning up his coat collar and pulling down his hat over his eyes, and he earnestly besought William Jordan to follow his example.