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154 stay ashore and at home for the rest of his life. It was a vow. He did not think it an act of expiation, though he came to look upon his voyage, necessary as it had been, in the light of a fault beyond atonement. To stay now seemed merely the one course possible. He felt vaguely, without quite putting it into words, that he had this thing to be devoted to, as a doorkeeper to the temple. And so he remained, alone. The villagers were kind, and would have been companionable. But theirs was a world apart from his; and although Marden was good to them in return, and indeed became known for innumerable little kindnesses, it was chiefly for a reason that they never dreamed of,—that in the same spirit he would have died for the sake of the meanest person in the village, so lightly did he value his time or his life. Like Hercules in the Alcestis,—a Hercules in shabby clothes,—he held his life out on his hand for any man to take. And they, seeing him grow into a young man of few or almost no words, a young man strong, clean, and straight in his ragged jacket, with a thin, sad face and the