"What is that?" asks Tim.
"A duty? Why, the same as made me take you in this night."
"How did it make you?" asks Tim, and listens with skepticism to her explanation.
"'T will be the same with you, settling my affairs on earth," says Molly in conclusion; "if you promise to do it 't is then a duty, and of course you would not fail—through storm and hardship and fear, you would go——"
"A duty," says Tim with reflection; "if you die you'll never know whether I 'tend to it."
"Why, that would make no difference. You would 'tend to it because you promised. You would follow the Farthest Lantern, as I will explain presently."
Queerly he looks round, studying the flicker of fire, the cozy room, even the clothes he is wearing; then the uplifted old face under the white hair with its expression of listening to things he cannot hear.
"I promise," he says, and laughs in a fierce puzzled way—the only laugh ever heard from him. And he has forgotten and Molly has forgotten to name the price to be paid for his trouble.
"Here is a pen you may fit in the broken holder," she says; "write what I cannot for the palsy in my hand. Now, as I tell you—'t is the letter of the Farthest Lantern—the lantern which beckons to duty."
But Tim fumbles the pen. "I never learned how," he explains, "to write the letters"; and on the instant feels the hand at his shoulder tremble and clutch, looks up a moment to see two great tears roll down her cheeks—and curses with a mighty smother in the breast of him.