.

THE FAITH OF COMRADES.
When Francis Armour left his wife's room he did not go to his own, but quietly descended the stairs, went to the library, and sat down.

The loneliest thing in the world is to be tete-a-tete with one's conscience.
A man may have a bad hour with an enemy, a sad hour with a friend, a peaceful hour with himself, but when the little dwarf, conscience, perches upon every hillock of remembrance and makes slow signs--those strange symbols of the language of the soul--to him, no slave upon the tread-mill suffers more.
The butler came in to see if anything was required, but Armour only greeted him silently and waved him away.

His brain was painfully alert, his memory singularly awake.

It seemed that the incident of this hour had so opened up every channel of his intelligence that all his life ran past him in fantastic panorama, as by that illumination which comes to the drowning man.