“That you can’t do,” answered the practical doctor.  “Such a weight would bring down the ceiling beneath.  But you can make it fast and block it up if the thing beats them.”

“We are like the blind moving in regions unfamiliar to their touch,” said Sir Walter.  “I had hoped so much from the prayer of that just man.  He, indeed, has gone to his reward.  He is with the boy he loved better than anything on earth; but for us is left great sorrow and distress.  Still, prayers continue to be answered, Mannering.  I have prayed for patience, and I find myself patient.  The iron has entered my soul.  The horror of publicity—­the morbid agony I experienced when I knew my name must be dragged through every newspaper in England—­these pangs are past.  My life seems to have ended in one sense, and, looking back, I cannot fail to see how little I grasped the realities of existence, how I took my easy days as a matter of course and never imagined that for me, too, extreme suffering and misery were lying in wait.  Each man’s own burden seems the hardest to bear, I imagine, and to me these events have shrivelled the very marrow in my bones.  They scorched me, and the glare, thrown from the larger world into the privacy of my life, made me feel that I could call on the hills to cover me.  But now I can endure all.”

“You must not look at it so, Sir Walter.  Everybody knows that you have done no wrong, and if your judgment is questioned, what is it?  Only the fate every man—­great or small, famous or insignificant—­ has to bear.  You can’t escape criticism in this world, any more than you can escape calumny.  It is something that you can now speak so steadfastly, preserve such patience, and see so clearly, too.  But, for my part, clear seeing only increases my anxiety to-night.  I don’t personally care a button for the welfare of those men, since they declined to take my advice; but I am human, and as I suffer with a sick patient and rejoice when he recovers, so I cannot help suffering at the thought of the risk these four are running.  They sit there, I suppose, or else walk about.  They wear gas masks, and carry weapons in their hands.  But if we are opposed to a blind, deaf, unreasoning force, which acts unconsciously and inevitably, then the fate of ten men would be just as uncertain as the fate of one.  The thing operates by day or night—­that much has been proved—­and, since it is probably acting automatically, as lightning or steam, how can they escape?”

“This invisible death-dealing force may be in the control of a human mind, remember.”

“It is beyond the bounds of possibility, Sir Walter.”

“You are a rash man to affirm anything so definite, after what you have gone through with the rest of us.  Let me, in my turn, urge you to go to your rest.  These things have told upon you.  You are only flesh and blood, not iron, as you fancy.  The men are all right so far.”

“I’ll get something to eat and drink,” said Mannering, “and leave you in peace for a while.”