Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/71

 with a startled gaze into my eyes. I say startled. It was, but there was more. There seemed for a second a gleam of hope awakened, hungry, oh, how hungry, pitiful in its yearning, and then the uselessness, the futility of that hope crushed it back, stamped it out, and the light in his eyes grew dull and died away.

We had halted at the door of his boarding-house and I made as though to go upstairs with him to his room, but he stopped me.

"Not now, Charlie, boy," he said, shaking his head and trying to smile; "not now. I want to be alone."

And so I left him.

Alone! He wanted to be alone. Were ever words more full of cruel mockery! It seems hard to understand sometimes, doesn't it? And we get to questioning things we'd far better leave alone. I know at first I used to wonder why Almighty God ever let Breen make that slip. He could have stopped it, couldn't He? But that's not right. We're running on train orders from the Great Dispatcher, and the finite can't span the infinite.

Maybe you'll think it queer that I left Breen like that, let him go to his room alone. You're thinking that in his condition he might do himself harm—end it all, to put it bluntly. Well, that thought didn't come to me then, it did afterward, but not then. Why? It must have been just the innate consciousness that he wouldn't do that sort of thing. Some men face things one way, some face them another. It's a question of individuality and temperament. I don't think Breen could have done anything like that, I know he seemed