“That’s not the sort of king you are.  You would be king anywhere.  But you’re willing to rule over a kingdom that may look small to some, but looks big as an empire to me, now that I understand.  I’ve reached this point:  I am almost—­and sometime I expect to be entirely—­glad that the thing happened to me which brought me here to you.  You have done more for me than any man ever did.  And there’s one thing I think I owe to you to tell you.  The greatest thing I’ve learned from you, though you haven’t said much about it, is faith in the God above us.  I’d about let go of that when I came here.  Thanks to you, I’ve got hold of it again, and I mean never to let go.  No man can afford to let go of that—­permanently.”

Burns was silent for a moment, in answer to this most unexpected tribute, silent because he could find no words.  When he did speak there was a trace of huskiness in his voice.  “I’m mighty glad to know that, Jack,” he said simply.

Then, presently, for they had flown fast over the smooth road, they were entering the city limits, traversing a crowded thoroughfare, and approaching the great station on whose tower the illuminated face of the clock warned them there was little time to spare.  Arrived there, every moment was consumed in a rush for tickets and in checking baggage.  Leaver secured his sleeper reservation with some difficulty, owing to a misunderstanding in the telegram engaging it, and at the last the two men had to run for the train.  At the gate there was only space for a hasty grip of two warm hands, a smile of understanding and affection, and an exchange of arm-wavings at a distance as Leaver reached his car, already on the verge of moving out.

As Burns drove away he was feeling a sense of loneliness as unpleasant as it was unexpected, and found himself longing to get back to a certain pair of arms whose hold was a panacea for every ache.

“He thinks he owes it all to me,” he was saying by and by, when this desirable condition had been fulfilled.  “But maybe I don’t owe something to him.  If the sight of a plucky fight for self-control is a bracing tonic to any man I’ve had one in watching him.  I never saw a finer display of will against heavy odds.  Another man in the shape he was in last spring would have gone under.”

“It would be pretty difficult, I think, dear,” said his wife, softly touching his thick locks, as his head lay on her lap, “for any man to go under with you pulling him out.”

“I didn’t pull him out.  No man in creation can pull another out, no matter how strong his effort.  The chap that’s in the current has got to do every last ounce of the pulling himself.  I don’t say God can’t help, for I’m positive He can, but I don’t think a man can do much.  And it’s my belief that even God helps chiefly through making the man realize that he can help himself.”

“For which office he sometimes appoints a man as his human instrument, doesn’t he?”