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He added in explanation, "There wouldn't have been such stories as yours at all, you know. . ..

"Tell me more about it," he said, "tell me all about yourself. I feel all these things have passed away, all these things are to be changed for ever. . . . You won't be what you have been from this time forth. All the things you have done--don't matter now. To us, at any rate, they don't matter at all. We have met, who were separated in that darkness behind us. Tell me.

"Yes," he said; and I told my story straight and as frankly as I have told it to you. "And there, where those little skerries of weed rock run out to the ebb, beyond the headland, is Bungalow Village. What did you do with your pistol?"

"I left it lying there--among the barley."

He glanced at me from under his light eyelashes. "If others feel as you and I do," he said, "there'll be a lot of pistols left among the barley to-day. . . ."

So we talked, I and that great, strong man, with the love of brothers so plain between us it needed not a word. Our souls went to one another in stark good faith; never before had I had anything but a guarded watchfulness for any fellow-man. Still I see him upon that wild desolate beach of the ebb tide. I see him leaning