Suddenly he threw up his arms with a despairing gesture.

“Oh, it isn’t myself, Honora, that I’m grieving for!  It’s those hot-headed, misguided, wayward fellows of mine!  They’ve left the homes I tried to help them win, they’ve followed a self-seeking, half-mad, wholly vicious agitator, and their lives, that I meant to have flow on so smoothly, will be troubled and wasted.  I know so well what will happen!  And then, their hate!  It hangs over me like a cloud!  I’m not supposed to be sensitive.  I’m looked on as a swaggering, reckless, devil-may-care fellow with a pretty good heart and a mighty sure aim; but I tell you, cousin, among them, they’ve taken the life out of me.”

“It’s your dark hour, Karl.  You’re standing the worst of it right now.  To-morrow things will look better.”

“I couldn’t ask a woman to come out here and stand amid this ruin with me, Honora.  You know I couldn’t.  The only person who would be willing to share my present life with me would be some poor, devil-driven creature like Elena—­come to think of it, even she wouldn’t!  She’s off and away with a lover at each elbow!”

“Here!” said Honora imperatively.  She held a plate toward him laden with steaming food.

He arose, took it, seated himself, and tried a mouthful, but he had to wash it down with water.

“I’m too tired,” he said.  “Really, Honora, you’ll have to forgive me.”

She got up then and lighted the lamp in his bedroom.

“Thank you,” he said.  “Rest is what I need.  It was odd they didn’t shoot, wasn’t it?  I thought every moment that they would.”

“You surely didn’t wish that they would, Karl?”

“No.”  He paused for a moment at the door.  “No—­only everything appeared to be so futile.  My bad deeds never turned on me as my good ones have done.  It makes everything seem incoherent.  What—­what would a woman like Miss Barrington make of all that—­of harm coming from good?”

“I don’t know,” said Honora, rather sharply.  “She hasn’t written.  I told her all the trouble we were in,—­the danger and the distress,—­but she hasn’t written a word.”

“Why should she?” demanded Wander.  “It’s none of her concern.  I suppose she thinks a fool is best left with his folly.  Good-night, cousin.  You’re a good woman if ever there was one.  What should I have done without you?”

Honora smiled wanly.  He seemed to have forgotten that it was she who would have fared poorly without him.

She closed up the house for the night, looking out in the bright moonlight to see that all was quiet.  For many days and nights she had been continually on the outlook for lurking figures, but now she was inclined to believe that she had overestimated the animosity of the strikers.  After all, try as they might, they could bring no accusations against the man who, hurt to the soul by their misunderstanding of him, was now laying his tired head upon his pillow.