“Hugh, don’t be angry wud me!  It’s only poor Deb,—­hur knows?”

He took the long skinny fingers kindly in his.

“Angry?  God help me, no!  Let me sleep.  I am tired.”

He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with pain and weariness.  She brought some old rags to cover him.

It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke.  I tell God’s truth, when I say he had then no thought of keeping this money.  Deborah had hid it in his pocket.  He found it there.  She watched him eagerly, as he took it out.

“I must gif it to him,” he said, reading her face.

“Hur knows,” she said with a bitter sigh of disappointment.  “But it is hur right to keep it.”

His right!  The word struck him.  Doctor May had used the same.  He washed himself, and went out to find this man Mitchell.  His right!  Why did this chance word cling to him so obstinately?  Do you hear the fierce devils whisper in his ear, as he went slowly down the darkening street?

The evening came on, slow and calm.  He seated himself at the end of an alley leading into one of the larger streets.  His brain was clear to-night, keen, intent, mastering.  It would not start back, cowardly, from any hellish temptation, but meet it face to face.  Therefore the great temptation of his life came to him veiled by no sophistry, but bold, defiant, owning its own vile name, trusting to one bold blow for victory.

He did not deceive himself.  Theft!  That was it.  At first the word sickened him; then he grappled with it.  Sitting there on a broken cart-wheel, the fading day, the noisy groups, the church-bells’ tolling passed before him like a panorama, while the sharp struggle went on within.  This money!  He took it out, and looked at it.  If he gave it back, what then?  He was going to be cool about it.

People going by to church saw only a sickly mill-boy watching them quietly at the alley’s mouth.  They did not know that he was mad, or they would not have gone by so quietly:  mad with hunger; stretching out his hands to the world, that had given so much to them, for leave to live the life God meant him to live.  His soul within him was smothering to death; he wanted so much, thought so much, and knew—­nothing.  There was nothing of which he was certain, except the mill and things there.  Of God and heaven he had heard so little, that they were to him what fairy-land is to a child:  something real, but not here; very far off.  His brain, greedy, dwarfed, full of thwarted energy and unused powers, questioned these men and women going by, coldly, bitterly, that night.  Was it not his right to live as they,—­a pure life, a good, true-hearted life, full of beauty and kind words?  He only wanted to know how to use the strength within him.  His heart warmed, as he thought of it.  He suffered himself to think of it longer.  If he took the money?

Then he saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly.  The night crept on, as this one image slowly evolved itself from the crowd of other thoughts and stood triumphant.  He looked at it.  As he might be!  What wonder, if it blinded him to delirium,—­the madness that underlies all revolution, all progress, and all fall?