If a man be harassed too greatly by outrageous fortune, there comes a time when he will defy the oppressing gods, and set their edicts at naught. Power’s temperament fitted him for sacrifice carried far beyond the common limits of human endurance; but his gorge rose against this latest tyranny; the recoil from bright hope to darkest despair brought him perilously near the gulf. Seated in his room, and reviewing his wrecked life, he was minded then and there to fling himself into the worst dissipation New York could offer. What had he gained by his self-imposed penance, his exile, and his unquestioning service? No monk of La Trappe had disciplined body and soul more rigorously than he during seven weary years; yet, seemingly, his atonement was not accepted, and he was faced now by a decree that entailed unending banishment. Was Providence, then, less merciful than man? The felon, convicted of an offense against his country’s laws, was better treated than he. The poor wretch released from prison was met at the gates of the penitentiary by philanthropic offer of reinstatement among his fellows; but for the man who had yielded once to the lure of a woman’s love there was, apparently, no forgiveness. Why should he accept any such inexorable ban? He was young, as men regard youth in these days. He was rich. The wine of life ran red in his veins. Why should he fold his arms and bend his head, and say with the meek Jesuit whose moldering bones had harbored that beautiful volume lying there in its leather covering, “Fiat voluntas Tua!”

That hour of revolt was the bitterest in Power’s existence. Like Jacob, he wrestled with a too potent adversary, and, refusing to yield, asked for a curse rather than a blessing; for he thought he was striving against a fiend. Fortunately, he underestimated his own strength. Some men, he knew, would have tossed every record of the past into the fire, and married the woman of their choice without other than a momentary qualm of conscience. That course, to him, was a sheer impossibility. While the dead Nancy and her living child stood in the gates of Eden, and option lay only between wedding Marguerite Sinclair and blowing out his brains, he would die unhesitatingly. But, if he continued to live, what was the outlook? Wine, women—debauchery, lewdness? His soul sickened at the notion. He laughed, with bitter humor, while picturing himself a rouÉ, a “sport”, an opulent supporter of musical comedy—especially with regard to its frailer exponents—a lounger in “fashionable” resorts. No; that was not the way out of the maze, if ever a way might be found.

It was a sign of returning sanity that he should fill his pipe. As the German proverb has it, “God first made man, and then He made woman; then, feeling sorry for man, He made tobacco”. Power continued to sit there smoking, lost in troubled but more humbled thought, until a chambermaid entered the room. He had kept no count of time, and had evidently passed many hours in somber musing; for the apartment was in semidarkness, and the girl started when she caught sight of the solitary figure sunk in the depths of an armchair.

“My land!” she cried, “but you made me jump!” Then, aware that this was not precisely the manner of address expected by patrons of the Waldorf-Astoria, she added hurriedly, “I beg your pardon, sir. I didn’t know you were in. Shall I switch on the light?”

“Can you?” he said.

“Why, of course, I can. There you are!”

The room was suddenly illuminated. Power rose and stretched his limbs—he felt as if he had marched many miles carrying a heavy load.

“Like others of your sex, you work miracles, then,” he said.

One glance at his face, and the housemaid regained confidence. “Yes, if it is a miracle to touch a switch,” she answered pertly.

“Nothing more wonderful was done when the world was created. ‘Let there be light: and there was light.’ You have read the first chapter of Genesis, I am sure?”

“Yes, and the second.”

“Good! Stop there, if you would rest thoroughly content. The serpent lifts his head in the third. Will you kindly send the valet?”

The girl confided to her fellow-servants in the service-room that the gentleman in Number So-and-so was very nice, but slightly cracked. He seemed to have been upset by a lot of old letters—and it was an odd thing that among all the rich people who lived in the hotel none seemed to be really happy. Now, if she, deponent, only possessed a fraction of their wealth, she would enjoy life to the limit.

Power did not change his attire that evening. He dined quietly in the restaurant, and strolled out into Broadway afterward. The loneliness of a great city, at first so repellent, was grateful to him now. The crowded streets were more democratic than the palatial saloons of the hotel, the air more breathable. But the flood of light in the Great White Way—though blazing then with a subdued magnificence as compared with its bewildering luster nowadays—was garish and harsh, and he turned into the sheltering gloom of a quiet side-street. He was passing a row of red-stone houses—bay-windowed, austere abodes, with porches surmounting steep flights of broad steps—when he saw an old, old man seated at the foot of one of these outer stairways. In summer, at that hour, every step would be occupied by people gasping for fresh, cool air; but in the depth of winter it was courting disease and death for anyone, especially the aged, to seek such repose.

The unusual spectacle stirred Power out of his mournful self-communing.

“Are you ill?” he said, halting in front of the patriarch.

“No, sorr,” came the cheerful answer, and a worn, deeply lined face was raised to his with a smile that banished the ravages of time as sunlight gilds a ruin. A street-lamp was near, and its rays fell on features which had once been strong and massive, but were now mellowed into the rare beauty of hale and kindly age. Silvery hair, still plentiful, and dark, keen eyes from which gleamed the intelligence and sympathy every clean-souled man may hope to gain if his years stretch beyond the span allotted by the prophet, made up a personality which would have appealed to an artist in search of a model.

“But you are taking a great risk by sitting on cold stone,” persisted Power.

“Sure, sorr, av it’s the will o’ God that I should die that way, it’s as good as anny other,” said the ancient. “All doores ladin’ to the next worruld are pretty much the same to me. I don’t care which wan I take so long as it lades me safe into Purgathory.”

Never before had Power heard so modest a claim on the benevolence of the Almighty.

“Are you tired of life, then?” he asked.

“Sorra a bit am I! Why should I be? Wouldn’t it be flyin’ in the face o’ Providence to say that I was tired of the sivinty-eight grand years I’ve spint in raisonable happiness an’ the best o’ health.”

“I like your philosophy. It has the right ring. But it can hardly be the will of God that you should shorten the remainder of those years by resting on a doorstep in this weather.”

“Young man,” said the other suddenly, “how old are ye?”

“Thirty-five.”

“Thorty-foive is it? An’ ye stand there an’ talk as though ye’d just come down like Moses from the top o’ Mount Sinai, an’ had the worrd o’ the Lord nately written in yer pocketbook. Sure, thim days is past entirely. God doesn’t talk to His sarvints anny longer in that way.”

“Tell me, then, how does He talk?”

“Faix, sorr, I’m on’y a poor ould man, an’ it’s not for the likes o’ me to insthruct a gintleman like you; but, av I’m not greatly mistaken, you’ve heard His voice more than wance or twice in yer life already, an’ yer own heart’ll tell you betther than I can what it sounds like.”

“Friend, your eyes are clearer than mine. Still, it will please me if you get up, and let me walk a little way with you. Or, if you don’t feel able to walk, allow me to take you to your destination in a cab.”

His new acquaintance rose, nimbly enough. Then Power saw that he had been using a bundle of newspapers as a cushion.

“A cab, is it?” laughed the other. “My! but money must come aisy your road, a thing it ’ud nivver do for me, thry as I might, an’ I was a hard worrker in me time. But I’d sooner walk. I’m feelin’ a thrifle shtiff, an’ I haven’t far to go.”

“May I come with you?”

“Ye may, an’ welcome. It’s a mighty pleasant thing to have a fri’ndly chat wid a man who has sinse enough to wear fine clo’es an’ talk like the aristocracy, an’ yet not be ashamed to be seen sp’akin’ to wan o’ my sort.”

“Will you think it rude if I inquire what you mean to do with those newspapers? Surely, at your age, you don’t sell them in the streets.”

“Faith, I’ll have to thry my hand at it now, an’ no mistake. Me grandson, Jimmy Maguire, was run over this afthernoon by an express van, an’ he’s up there at the hospital in West 16th Street. Jimmy is all that is left betune me an’ the wall, an’ I’m goin’ now to give in his returns. Mebbe the newspaper folk will let me hould his stand till the docthors sind him out.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Sure, sorr, God is good to the poor Irish.”

“I hope so, most sincerely. Still, a newspaper is a commercial enterprise, and the publisher may think you unequal to the job. What then?”

“Thin? I’d take a reef in me belt for breakfast, an’ spind a p’aceful hour in the cathaydral, that dhrame in shtone up there on Fifth Avenue. Don’t ye remimber that verse in the Psalms, ‘I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.’ Manny’s the toime thim worrds have consoled me whin iverything looked black, an’ I was throubled wid quare thoughts, bein’ nigh famishin’ wid hunger.”

“Have you actually wanted food—here, in this great city?”

The old fellow laughed merrily. Evidently, he found the question humorous.

“Sure, I’ve had the misforchunes of Job,” he said. “First, I lost me darlin’ wife. Thin I lost me job as a buildher’s foreman. I had two sons, and wan was dhrowned at say, an’ the other was killed in a mine——”

“In a mine? What sort of mine?”

“A gold mine, at a place called Bison, in Colorado.”

“When?”

“Nine years ago last Christmas?”

“Was his name Maguire?”

“No, sorr—Rafferty. A foine, upshtandin’ boy he was, too.”

Power recalled the incident. Indeed, he had helped to clear the rockfall which crushed the life out of the unfortunate miner. But he gave no sign of his knowledge.

“Why is your grandson named Maguire?” he went on.

“He is my daughther’s son, an’ she died in childbirth. More’s the pity, because Maguire was a dacint man; but he took to the dhrink afther she was gone, an’ that was the ind of him.”

“Yet you are a firm believer in the goodness of Providence, notwithstanding all these cruel blows?”

“Musha, sorr,” said Rafferty anxiously, “have ye nivver read the Book o’ Job? Look at the thrials an’ crosses put on that poor ould craythur, an’ where would he have been if the thrue faith wasn’t in him?”

“Rafferty, I would give ten years of my life to believe as you believe.”

“Indade, sorr, ye needn’t give tin minutes. Go home to yer room, an’ sink down on your marrowbones, an’ ax for help an’ guidance, an’ they’ll be given you as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. Though, moind ye, ye mayn’t know it all at wance, just as it may be rainin’ tomorrow, when the sun will be hid; but he’ll be shinin’ high up in the sky for all that.”

The two crossed Sixth Avenue together, and Rafferty pointed to a big building, a place ablaze with light and quivering with the activities of six-decker printing machines.

“That’s where I’m goin’,” he said. “Maybe they’ll detain me some toime.”

“Before we part, my friend, tell me where you live.”

“Away over in the poorest part o’ Twinty-sivinth Street, sorr.”

“And how old is your grandson?”

“He’ll be eleven next birthday.”

“Is he seriously injured?”

Then tears came into the old man’s eyes. For once his splendid courage wavered.

“They wouldn’t tell me at the hospital, an’ that’s the truth, sorr; but a polisman who helped to pull him from undher the wagon said he thought he had escaped the worrst.”

“Are you and Jimmy known to any of the priests at the cathedral?”

“Sure, sorr, don’t they all know us? I remimber Canon M’Evoy comin’ there twinty-foive years ago.”

“And now, Rafferty, as one friend to another, will you let me help you?”

“Musha, an’ is it beggin’ you think I am?” and a gleam of Celtic fire shone through the mist of anguish.

“No. But you have given me good counsel tonight, and I am minded to pay for it.”

“Faith, I haven’t said a worrd that isn’t plain for all min, an’ women, too, to read, if they have a moind to look for it in the right place.”

“Sometimes one needs reminding of that, and you have done it. Come, now. Let me finance you with a few dollars, just to carry you along till Jimmy is around again.”

Rafferty drew a knotted hand across his eyes, and then peered keenly into Power’s face. What he saw there seemed to reassure him.

“Well, an’ it’s me that’s the lucky man, an’ no mistake!” he cried, while whole-hearted joy seemed to make him young again. “I’ll take your help in the spirit it’s offered in, sorr. If the situation was revarsed, I’d do what I could for you, because you have the look av a man who’d do unto others that which he wants others to do unto him. An’, by that same token, I’ve as much chance av gettin’ Jimmy’s stand wid the papers as I have av bein’ run for Prisident av the United States next fall.”

Power took a folded note from his pocketbook.

“Put that where the cat can’t get it,” he said. “And now goodby, and thank you.”

But something unusual in the aspect of the note caused Rafferty to open it.

“Sure, an’ you were nearly committin’ a terrible blundher!” he cried excitedly. “This is a hundred dollars, sorr, an’ you’d be m’anin’, mebbe, to give me a foive.”

“No. Don’t be vexed with me, but that amount of money will make things easy during the next month or so.”

“The next month! Glory be to God, I can live like a prince for three months, on a hundred dollars!”

“I firmly believe that you will live better than most princes.... That’s right. Stow it away carefully, and don’t forget that I am still your debtor.”

“Why, sorr, I can nivver repay you as long as I live.”

“Oh, yes, you can. Remember me when you go to the cathedral tomorrow.”

“Sorr, may I ax yer name?”

“Power—John Darien Power.”

“Arrah, an’ are ye Irish?”

“No.”

“’Tis an Irish name, annyhow. But it matthers little what nation ye belong to. You’re a rale Christian, an’ ’tis writ in your face.”

“There have been times when I would have doubted that; but the spirit of God has been abroad in New York tonight, and, perhaps, it has descended on me. Once more, goodby! I needn’t wish you content, because you cinched that long ago.”

“Ah, sorr, may Hivin bless ye! Manny’s the heart you’ll make light in this vale av tears, or I’m no judge av a man.”

It seemed to Power’s overwrought imagination as though Rafferty had suddenly assumed the guise and bearing of a supernatural being. Those concluding words rang in his ears as he hurried away. They had the sound of a message, an exhortation. The iron walls which appeared to encircle him had been cast down. His feet were set on an open road, fair and inviting, and he cared not whither it led so long as he escaped from the prison in which his soul might have been pent eternally.

Diving through a press of traffic, he reached the opposite side of a small square. A congestion of street-cars and other vehicles cleared during a brief interval, and, looking back, he saw the old man standing motionless, gazing up at the sky. At that instant a ragged urchin, carrying a bundle of papers, seemed to recognize Rafferty, and spoke to him.

The Irishman, called back to earth, bent over the youth, and, evidently obeying a generous impulse, added his own store of “returns” to those of the boy, patted him on the head, and pointed to a doorway.

Power could have repeated with tolerable accuracy every word that passed, though the notable din of New York was quadrupled in that particular locality:

“Say, how’s Jimmy, Mr. Rafferty?”

“Eh? Faix, he’s mighty bad, but God is good, and mebbe he’ll recover. Is it takin’ in yer returns ye are? Well, now, here’s some I don’t want; so just add thim to yer own shtock, an’ mind ye’ll be afther takin’ the money to yer mother. She needs it more’n I do, the poor sowl.”

Then the man of faith recrossed Sixth Avenue, and was lost to sight.

In his room that night Power wrote to Marguerite:

“My dear Meg.—This is my first and last letter to you; so I pray you read it with sympathy. Today I bought a ring at a jeweler’s intending it to be a token of our promised marriage. I am sending the ring, and I ask you to wear it in remembrance of one who must remain forever dead to you. The life of happiness we planned has turned to Dead Sea fruit; for I have been struck by a bolt from Heaven, and marriage becomes an impossibility. I would explain myself more clearly if explanation were not an insult. But I must say this—no man could have foreseen the calamity which has befallen me, which has laid in wait throughout the long years to overwhelm me at last. That is all I dare tell you. Forgive me, dear one. I would not willingly cause you a pang; but Fate is stronger than I, and I am vanquished. Do you know me well enough to accept this statement in its crude truth? It cannot be gainsaid, it cannot be altered, time itself cannot assuage its rigors. Do not write to me. I have no fear of reproach, which would never come from your dear lips, but your strong, brave words would wring my very heartstrings. And yet, I love you, and will grieve till the end that you should have been reft from me. Farewell, then, my dear one.