“They went hours ago,” replied James.  It was, in fact, two in the morning.  James followed the doctor, haggard and weary, into the kitchen, where, according to custom at such times, some dinner had been left to keep warm on the range.  “I’ll sit down here,” said Doctor Gordon.  “It is warmer than in the dining-room, and I am chilled through.  If you don’t mind, Elliot, I wish you would get me a bottle of apple-jack from the dining-room.  I must have something to hearten me up, or I shall go by the board, and I don’t know what will become of her—­of them.”

James sat and waited while the doctor ate and drank.  When he had finished he looked a little less haggard.  He stretched himself before the warm glow from the range and laughed.  “Now I feel my fighting blood is up again,” he said.  “After all, if there is anything in the Good Book, the wicked shall not always triumph, and I may win out.  I shall do my best anyhow.  But I confess you took the wind out of me with what you told me when I came in.  I am glad Clara does not know.  Poor little Clemency having to pave her way with lies, but it would kill Clara.  Oh, God, it does seem as if I had enough before.  Take my advice, young man, and try to think more of yourself than anybody else in the world.  Don’t let your heart go out to anybody.  Just as sure as you do, the door of the worst torture-chamber in creation swings open.  The minute you become vulnerable through love, you haven’t a strong place in your whole armor.”

“What a doctrine!” observed James.

“I know it, but I have taken a fancy to you, boy; and hang it if I want you to suffer as I have to.”

“But a man would not be a man at all if he did not think enough of somebody to suffer,” said James, and now he was thinking of poor little Clemency, and how she had nestled up to him for protection.

“Maybe,” said Doctor Gordon gloomily, “but sometimes I wonder whether it pays in the long run to be what you call a man.  Sometimes I wish that I were a rock or a tree.  I do to-night.”

“You will feel better after you have had a little sleep,” James said, as the two men rose.

Suddenly one of Doctor Gordon’s inexplicable changes of mood came over him.  He laughed.  “If it were not so late we would go down to Georgie K.’s,” said he.  “I never felt more awake.  Well, I guess it’s too late.  You must be dead tired yourself.  I have not thanked you at all for your rescue of the girl.  She would have been down with a serious illness if you had not gone, for she would have lain in that place being snowed over until somebody came.”

“She was mighty clever to do what she did,” said James.

“Yes, she is clever,” returned Doctor Gordon.  “She is a good girl, and it stings me to the very heart that she has to suffer such persecution.  Well, ‘all’s well that ends well.’  Did it ever occur to you that God made up to mankind for the horrors of creation, by stating that there would be an end to it some day?  Good God, if this terrible world had to roll on to all eternity!” Doctor Gordon laughed again his unnatural laugh.  “Fancy if you were awakened to-night by the last trump,” he said.  “How small everything would seem.  Hang it, though, if I wouldn’t try to have a hand at that man’s finish before the angel of the Lord got his flaming sword at work.”