There was a bandage over his eyes for days; people speaking in whispers; and when the bandage was taken away there were the white hospital walls, so like the walls of smoke at first in the dim light, high above him.  When he had grown to understand it was but hospital walls, he looked around for the Presence in alarm, crying out, “Where is He?”

Bill Ward and Tennelly and Pat were there, huddled in a group by the door, hoping he might recognize them.

“He’s calling for Steve!” whispered Pat, and turned with a gulp while the tears rolled down his cheeks.  “He must have seen him go!”

The nurse laid him down on the pillow again, replacing the bandage.  When he closed his eyes the Presence came back, blessed, sweet—­and he was at peace.

The days passed; strength crept back into his body, consciousness to his brain.  The bandage was taken off once more, and he saw the nurse and other faces.  He did not look again for the Presence.  He had come to understand he could not see it with his eyes; but always it was there, waiting, something sweet and wonderful.  Waiting to show him what to do when he was well.

The memorial services had been held for Stephen Marshall many days, the university had been draped in black, with its flag at half-mast, the proper time, and its mourning folded away, ere Paul Courtland was able to return to his room and his classes.

They welcomed him back with touching eagerness.  They tried to hush their voices and temper their noisiness to suit an invalid.  They told him all their news, what games had been won, who had made Phi Beta Kappa, and what had happened at the frat. meetings.  But they spoke not at all of Stephen!

Down the hall Stephen’s door stood always open, and Courtland, walking that way one day, found fresh flowers upon his desk and wreathed around his mother’s picture.  A quaint little photograph of Stephen taken several years back hung on one wall.  It had been sent at the class’s request by Stephen’s mother to honor her son’s chosen college.

The room was set in order, Stephen’s books were on the shelves, his few college treasures tacked up about the walls; and conspicuous between the windows hung framed the resolutions concerning Stephen the hero-martyr of the class, telling briefly how he had died, and giving him this tribute, “He was a man!”

Below the resolutions, on the little table covered with an old-fashioned crocheted cotton table-cover, lay Stephen’s Bible, worn, marked, soft with use.  His mother had wished it to remain.  Only his clothes had been sent back to her who had sent him forth to prepare for his life-work, and received word in her distant home that his life-work had been already swiftly accomplished.

Courtland entered the room and looked around.

There were no traces of the fray that had marred the place when last he saw it.  Everything was clean and fine and orderly.  The simple saint-like face of the plain farmer’s-wife-mother looked down upon it all with peace and resignation.  This life was not all.  There was another.  Her eyes said that.  Paul Courtland stood a long time gazing into them.