It was not safe in that neighbourhood to try new pathways in
the dark, and chancing upon a deserted shelter, I made myself a bed
upon the straw.
I found him seated outside the hut when I returned, and he greeted
me as if he had been expecting me just at that moment and not
before. He guessed just what had happened, he told me, and had not
been alarmed. During the day I found him watching me, and in the
evening, as we sat in his favourite place outside the hut, he turned
to me.
"You think it true?" he said. "That you and I sat here years ago
and talked?"
"I cannot tell," I answered. "I only know that he died here, if
there be such a thing as death--that no one has ever lived here
since. I doubt if the door has ever been opened till we came."
"They have always been with me," he continued, "these dreams. But I
have always dismissed them. They seemed so ludicrous. Always there
came to me wealth, power, victory. Life was so easy."
He laid his thin hand on mine. A strange new look came into his
eyes--a look of hope, almost of joy.
"Do you know what it seems to me?" he said. "You will laugh
perhaps, but the thought has come to me up here that God has some
fine use for me. Success was making me feeble. He has given me
weakness and failure that I may learn strength.
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