Then Davy broke down utterly, and big tears filled his eyes, and ran down his cheeks.
"I promise," he sobbed.
"Good lad—now go."
Davy turned about and went away, at first running, and then dragging slowly, then running again, and then again lingering.
What followed was a very pitiful conflict of emotion. Nature, who looks down pitilessly on man and his big, little passions, that clamor so loud but never touch her at all—even Nature played her part in this tragedy.
When Davy Fayle was gone, Dan and Ewan stood face to face as before, Dan with his back to the cliff, Ewan with his face to the sea. Then, without a word, each turned aside and picked up his militia belt.
The snowflakes had thickened during the last few moments, but now they seemed to cease and the sky to lighten. Suddenly in the west the sky was cloven as though by the sweep of a sword, and under a black bar of cloud and above a silvered water-line the sun came through very red and hazy in its setting, and with its ragged streamers around it.
Ewan was buckling the belt about his waist when the setting sun rose upon them, and all at once there came to him the Scripture that says, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." If God's hand had appeared in the heavens, the effect on Ewan could not have been greater. Already his passion was more than half gone, and now it melted entirely away.
"Dan," he cried, and his voice was a sob, "Dan, I can not fight—right or wrong I can not," and he flung himself down, and the tears filled his eyes.
Then Dan, whose face was afire, laughed loud and bitterly. "Coward," he said, "coward and poltroon!"