Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/260

252 cruel, remains. No human being would blame Hugh for leaving his flock to the terror of the flame. Yet he was a man, one of the Breed, and he had no power to disobey the promptings of his own spirit.

Yet out of her tearful eyes, Alice saw in Hugh's stand the heaven-sent impulse that has brought the world up from the darkness. She understood old wars, the martyrdom of peoples. Vision had come to her, and throughout the world she saw men's works and heard women's tears. She could see the Viking, leaving the white arms of his woman and following western stars; the frontiersman, striking out from his beloved hearth to seek new dominions; the blood-stained paths of armies; the builder, stretching his bridges across roaring rivers and his railroads into uncharted lands. Through the long roll of the ages she saw the shepherd on the rugged hills, alone and wondering and full of thoughts, watching his sheep.

The man he had been—the waster and the egotist—was wholly gone now. Only the shepherd remained. Hugh saw himself as he really was,—just a pawn by which Destiny works out vast and invisible schemes of its own. His life didn't matter here. His love for this girl beside him pulled at his heart, but the laws within him could not be disobeyed. He was only the shepherd, and here—a milling, panic-stricken band—were his sheep.