So far he had played the game of life as a hard man, perhaps, and a selfish one, but always honestly.

Now, for the first time, he had stepped aside from the beaten track.

He told himself that he was not bound to believe Da Souza's story, that he had left Monty with the honest conviction that he was past all human help.

Yet he knew that such consolation was the merest sophistry.

Through the twilight, as he passed to and fro, he fancied more than once that the wan face of an old man, with wistful, sorrowing eyes, was floating somewhere before him--and he stopped to listen with bated breath to the wind rustling in the elm-trees, fancying he could bear that same passionate cry ringing still in his ears--the cry of an old man parted from his kin and waiting for death in a lonely land..