And, bowing, Dale plunged into his long-pondered oration.  Their three faces told him that he was failing.  Not a single point seemed to score.  He was muddled, hopeless, but still brave.  He struggled on stanchly.  With a throbbing at his temples, a prickly heat on his chest, a clammy coldness in his spine—­with his voice sounding harsh and querulous, or dull and faint—­with the sense that all the invisible powers of evil had combined to deride, to defeat, and to destroy him—­he struggled on toward the bitterly bitter end of his ordeal.

He had nearly got there, was just reaching his man-to-man finale, when the judges cut him short.

“One moment, Mr. Dale.”

The nice young man had come in, and was talking both to Sir John and the Colonel.

“Thank you.  Just for a moment.”

Of his own accord Dale had gone back to the window.

It was all over.  Never mind about the end of the speech.  Nothing could have been gained by saying it.  The tension of his nerves relaxed, and a wave of sick despair came rolling upward from viscera to brain.  He knew now with absolute certainty that right was going to count for nothing; no justice existed in the world; these men were about to decide against him.

“Yes,”—­and the young man laughed genially—­“he said I was to offer his apologies.”

Dale listened to the conversation at the table without attempting to understand it.  Somebody, as he gathered dully, was demanding an interview.  But the interruption could make no difference.  It was all over.

“He said he wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer.”

Then they all laughed; and Sir John said to the young man, “Very well.  Ask him in.”

The young man went out, leaving the door open; and Dale saw that the secretary had risen and brought another chair to the table.  Then footsteps sounded in the corridor, and Sir John and the Colonel smilingly turned their eyes toward the open doorway.  Dale, turning his eyes in the same direction, started violently.

The newcomer was Mr. Barradine.

He shook hands with the gentlemen at the table, who had both got up to receive him; he talked to them pleasantly and chaffingly, and there was more laughter; then he nodded to Dale; then he said he was much obliged to the secretary for giving him the chair, and then he sat down.

Dale’s thoughts were like those of a drowning sailor, when through the darkness and the storm he hears the voice of approaching aid.  He had been going down in the deep, cruel waters, with the longed-for lights of home, the adored face of his wife, the dreaded gates of hell, all dancing wildly before his eyes—­and now.  Breath again, hope again, life again.