'What fish, Harry,' I asked, 'is this that you bring me to catch with pistols and long-bows?'
'A fish that swims from Antwerp,' answered Harry, laughing. 'Wait and you shall see, if we have luck or judgment.'
There was little laughter in me as I lay there in the dim lantern light, with the sound of the wicked river whispering temptation in my ear. Was it that which seemed to take from me the power to rebuke in him what seemed to me no less than sin; or was it shame lest he should think that Cambridge had so softened and unmanned me that I no longer would follow wherever he led?
Harry must be right, thought I, and Frank Drake too! It must be right, yet would God I were in my trundle bed at Mr. Cartwright's side again! Surely Cambridge was sorely changing me. The great struggle of my life had begun, though I knew it not; the strife for the mastery of me between the inward man-made life of scholarship and vain hurry after God, and the strong, pure, out-o'-door life of England that God Himself had given me for my birthday gift.
Who shall say which is best? Not I, now I am old; but then, as I lay there beside Harry, in my vanity and blindness I said to myself: 'Surely his life is not of God; it is mine that is from heaven, the search after wisdom, the merciless war for truth, the exalting of the spirit and abasement of the body.'
My lips were trembling with a prayer that he might be turned and grow like me, but then I opened my eyes to look at him through the dim lantern light, and my prayer died unborn. Surely that gently-breathing figure, lying so calm and careless there in all its manly beauty, surely that must be all God's work, and what came of it His work as well.
So let me cease to resist, and let the hissing river hurry me on wheresoever it will with him.
CHAPTER VII
It was John Drake's rough voice that aroused me, as the soft morning light glimmered into the cabin where I had been sleeping.