“May I—may John here—not even make a drawing of one—one screw?” said the broken Friar, in spite of himself.
“Nowise!” Stephen took it over. “Your dagger, John. Sheathed will serve.”
He unscrewed the metal cylinder, laid it on the table, and with the dagger’s hilt smashed some crystal to sparkling dust which he swept into a scooped hand and cast behind the hearth.
“It would seem,” said he, “the choice lies between two sins. To deny the world a Light which is under our hand, or to enlighten the world before her time. What you have seen, I saw long since among the physicians at Cairo. And I know what doctrine they drew from it. Hast thou dreamed, Thomas? I also—with fuller knowledge. But this birth, my sons, is untimely. It will be but the mother of more death, more torture, more division, and greater darkness in this dark age. Therefore I, who know both my world and the Church, take this Choice on my conscience. Go! It is finished.”
He thrust the wooden part of the compasses deep among the beech logs till all was burned.
[5] Hymn No. 226, A. and M., “The world is very evil.”
THE LAST ODE
(Nov. 27, B.C. 8.)
Horace, Ode 31, Bk. V.
As watchers couched beneath a Bantine oak,