"Yet you do not fear! You have endured! The fire hath no terrors for you!"
"Because I am old in suffering, and am done with fear, because, beyond smoke and flame, I shall find God at last."
"Think ye there is a God?"
"I know it, Martin!"
"Yet am I coward!" I groaned. "Though 'tis not death I fear, nor the torture so much, 'tis rather to be thus counting the hours—"
"I know," said he, sighing. "I know. 'Tis the waiting for what is to be, ah, the weary, weary waiting—'tis this doth shake the strongest; the hour of suffering may be now, or to-morrow, or a month hence."
"God send it be to-night!" said I fervently. "And to-night, and while I am yet the man I am, know this; I, that lived but for vengeance, dying, do renounce it once and for ever. I, that came hither seeking an enemy, find, in place of hated foe, a man ennobled by his sufferings and greater than myself. So, as long as life remains to us, let there be peace and good will betwixt us, Sir Richard. And as you once sued forgiveness of me, now do I sue your friendship—"
"Martin!" said he in choking voice, and then again, "Oh, Martin Conisby, thus hath God answered my prayer and thus doth the feud betwixt Conisby and Brandon end—"
"Yes!" said I. "Yes—so do I know at last that I have followed a vain thing and lost all the sweetness life had to offer."
Now here, seeing me lie thus deject and forlorn, he stooped and set his ragged arm about me.