That far-away God, that Judge in the black cap, had pronounced sentence against him, had doomed that he should die in his sins.

When he had sat in his own village church only last Sunday between his mother and sister, he had seen the empty place on his chancel wall where the tablet to his memory would be put up.

When he walked through the church-yard, his mother leaning on his arm, his step regulated by her feeble one, he had seen the vacant space by his father's grave already filled by the mound of raw earth which would shortly cover him.

His heart had ached for his mother, for the gentle, feeble-minded sister, who had transferred the interest in life, which keeps body and soul together, from her colorless existence to that of her brother.

Hughie was the romance of her gray life: what Hughie said, what Hughie thought, Hughie's wife--oh, jealous thought, only to be met by prayer! But later on--joy of joys--Hughie's children! He realized it, now and then, vaguely, momentarily, but never as fully as last Sunday.
He shrank from the remembrance, and his mind wandered anew in the labyrinth of broken, twisted thought, from which he could find no way out.
_There must be some way out!_ He had stumbled callously through one day after another of these weeks in which he had not seen Rachel towards his next meeting with her, as a half-blind man stumbles towards the light.
But the presence of Rachel afforded no clew to the labyrinth.