Page:Vorse--The ninth man.djvu/86

 power of life and death must fight thus dolorously, even as I did. I felt my own weakness, and the words that Mazzaleone had spoken, without love and without hate, from the depths of his knowledge of the hearts of men, echoed themselves in me.

As he had said, he had set men's feet keeping step to the tune of death, and Brother Agnello had cried to us above this march of death until all the heart of all San Moglio was torn. It is a strange thing to see a town having to fight life and death within itself. The company of pity which never wavered were happy, and those who sought death always were happier in their own way than those who wavered and swayed, as must I. Many a man I saw, and woman, who were athirst for blood as a hungry man for meat at one moment, and at the next moment put from them all thought of revenge and all thought of death, and then must go a-licking their chops again at the sweet thought of death. When such battles fight themselves out in the silence of a man's soul it is bad enough for him, but when he feels his fellows fighting it, when the air is full of it and