life for sinners, and prayed for His enemies who pierced and nailed Him to the Cross.  His words are ever words of mercy.  Were He here with us today upon earth, where should we find Him now?  Surely where the peril was greatest, where the need sorest, where the darkness, the terror, the distress blackest.  And where He would be, were He with us here, is the place where those who would follow Him most faithfully should be found.  Not all perchance; there be claims of kindred, ties of love that no man may lightly disregard:  But none such ties bind me.  I have but my brother to love, and he is out in the world —­ he needs me not.  I am free to go where the voice within calls me; and I go forth to-morrow.”

“And whither goest thou?” asked John, in a low, awestruck tone.

“I go to Father Paul,” answered Raymond, without hesitation, as one who has thought the matter well out beforehand.  “Wherever the need is sorest, the peril greatest, there will Father Paul be found.  And the Brotherhood stands in the heart of the smitten regions; wherefore at his very doors the sick will be lying, untended perchance and unassoiled, save in those places whither he can go.  I fare forth at sunrising tomorrow, to seek and to find him.  He will give me work, he will let me toil beside him; better than that I ask not.”

John had risen from his seat.  An answering light had sprung to his eyes as he had heard and watched Raymond.  Now he laid his hand upon his cousin’s arm, and said quietly: 

“Go, then, in the name of the Lord; I too go with thee.”

Raymond turned his head and looked full at his cousin, marking the thin, sunken lines of the face, the stooping pose of the shoulders, the hectic flush that came and went upon the hollow cheek; and seeing this and knowing what it betokened, he linked his arm within John’s and commenced walking up and down the room with him, as though inaction were impossible at such a moment.  And as he walked he talked.

“Good John,” he said, “I would fain have thee with me; but I well know thou hast no strength for the task thou hast set thyself.  Even the long day’s ride would weary thy frame so sorely that thou wouldst fall an easy victim to the sickness ere thou hadst done aught to help another.  Thou hast thy father, thy mother, and thy good uncle to think of.  How sad would they be to hear whither thou hadst gone!  And then, my cousin, it may well be that for thee there is other work, and work for which thou canst better prepare thyself here than in any other place.  I have thought of thee as well as of myself as I have ridden homeward this day.  Shall I tell thee what my thought —­ my dream of thee was like?”

“Ay, tell me; I would gladly hear.”