The flame-gatherers

by Margaret Horton Potter

For a moment or two the hermit stood perfectly still, exhausted by the struggle that had passed. Then he took the unconscious man by the arms, and dragged and pulled him back to the bed, on which he placed him, limp and unresisting. Afterwards he went to replenish the fire, over which he busied himself for some minutes. Finally he returned to the doorway, and seated himself so that he could watch both the bed and the world without.

He was thoroughly tired. He could not remember ever experiencing such a battle as the one just passed; and it had taken all his strength. In the corner, the stranger had now begun to moan, faintly; but Oman made no move to go to him. Just now he felt no desire to help a creature who had so lately attempted his life. Rather, there was a new bitterness in him. Had it not been always thus—a return of evil for good? This was all that unselfishness or self-sacrifice had ever brought him. Where was the divine justice to be found? Where was that universal law of compensation? Alas! Experience was once more accomplishing its work, narrowing its victim down to the little present, blotting out all the breadth of view that reflection and solitude had brought.

For many hours Oman sat there, musing bitterly, till the cloud-veiled sun was down, and night, still filled with the rush of tempest, advanced. Then, at last, he turned within, replenished his fire, and cooked himself a meal of rice. As he ate, he glanced over toward the stranger, who, however, made no sign. When he had finished, Oman crept quietly to the bed, and looked down at his charge, to see if he had need of anything. But he found the old man fast asleep.

After a time he returned to his post in the doorway. He found the night changed. Through torn and shimmering mists, the golden moon came rolling up out of the hills, bringing with her a court of stars, and driving the heavier clouds away down the western slope of the sky. Peace had come upon the height. The ruin wrought by the storm was being atoned for now. It was the hour of Nature’s repentance. Oman looked, and his own soul grew calm. This scene was so familiar to him! How many times, in his long sojourn on the height, had he not gazed upon it thus, gloried in it, loved it? But to-night, when its mission had been accomplished, and he had been restored to tranquillity, he turned his thought to other things—one other thing:—a strange, foreboding sense of recognition of some of the words spoken by the wanderer: “The Asra ruby is mine own—given me in payment—” And it was Oman himself who involuntarily added, in thought, the last words that his charge had uttered: “Faces! Faces! Faces!” What were the faces rising round him here, in the firelit night? What pale ghosts of the long ago were taking shape? What was it now burning behind his brain, struggling to break the barrier of the past? Oman bent his head, and clasped it in his two hands, thinking in vain, yet ever with the sense that remembrance was imminent. He was at a high pitch of nervousness when the unwelcome voice reached his ears:—a voice faint, and weak, and low, as if it came out of the depths of the bygone years:

“Hermit—art thou there?”

With a passing shiver, Oman rose and went to the bed where the old man lay. As he approached, the stranger lifted one hand slightly, and murmured:

“Fear not, hermit. I am not now mad. Nay—all things are clear before me, for I am approached by Rama.”

Oman knelt beside him, and gazed earnestly into the gaunt, white-bearded face, across which the fire cast a flickering light that brought out every smallest line and wrinkle. An ashen pallor pinched his features, giving them the unmistakable, waxen look that comes only to those whose souls are poised for flight. Oman saw at once that death was near; and his heart contracted, painfully:

“Yes,—thou seest it,” said the wanderer, quietly, as he looked into Oman’s eyes. “It is time. My spirit is glad of its release.”

He lapsed into silence again; nor had Oman any desire to break the stillness over which, as he knew, Rama brooded. The wanderer retained his consciousness: seemed, indeed, to be lost in a revery, while Oman sat watching him. After a time, in the course of his musing, the dying man’s hand crept up to that string which was about his neck; nor, this time, did his touch stop with the string. With an air of delivering himself of a heavy secret, he drew, from beneath his loose garment, a tiny, golden box. Lifting this in his thumb and first finger, he turned his face to Oman, and began to speak, disjointedly, at first, as if he were thinking aloud; then, by degrees, launching into narrative form, with a story that held Oman spell-bound at his side.