He thought of the gulf that gradually had opened up between them.

The lad was righteous and God-fearing, truthful and sober, filled with stern ideals by which he sought to shape his life.

He had taxed Crispin with his dissoluteness, and Crispin, despising him for a milksop, had returned to his disgust with mockery, and had found a fiendish pleasure in arousing that disgust at every turn.
To-night, as Crispin eyed the youth, and remembered that at dawn he was to die in his company, he realized that he had used him ill, that his behaviour towards him had been that of the dissolute ruffler he was become, rather than of the gentleman he had once accounted himself.
"Kenneth," he said at length, and his voice bore so unusually mild a ring that the lad looked up in surprise.

"I have heard tell that it is no uncommon thing for men upon the threshold of eternity to seek to repair some of the evil they may have done in life." Kenneth shuddered.

Crispin's words reminded him again of his approaching end.