Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/70

 to Breen it's not for me to judge her. Who am I, that I should? It is between her and her Maker. I'll come to that in a minute.

Yes, Breen knew well enough what it meant to him, but his thoughts that morning as we walked up the street weren't, I know right well, on himself—he was thinking of those others. And I, well, I was thinking of Breen. Wouldn't you? I told you I owed Breen everything I had in the world. Neither of us said a word all the way up to his boarding-house. It was almost as though I wasn't with him for all the attention he paid to me. But he knew I was there just the same. I like to think of that. I wasn't very old then—I'm not offering that as an excuse, for I'm not ashamed to admit that I was near to tears—if I'd been older perhaps I could have said or done something to help. As it was, all I could do was to turn that one black thought over and over and over again in my mind. Breen's living death, death, death, death. That's the way it hit me, the way it caught me, and the word clung and repeated itself as I kept step beside him.

He was dead, dead to hope, ambition, future, everything, as dead as though he lay outstretched before me in his coffin. It seemed as if I could see him that way. And then, don't ask me why, I don't know, I only know such things happen, come upon you unconsciously, suddenly, there flashed into my mind that bit of verse from the Bible, you know it—"if a man die, shall he live again?" I must have said it out loud without knowing it, for he whirled upon me quick as lightning, placed his two hands upon my shoulders, and stared