He was all alone in the world; very much so.  His father was dead; and his mother, who had married a penniless idealist for love, was dead these many years.  Fifteen he was when she died ... a long time ago.  And he had had nobody since.  He had just been beginning to feel close to his Uncle Armistead, and now Uncle Armistead was dead, too.  And he had no sisters or brothers.  He had no wife or children....

He was alone, and by that token he was free.  No tie bound up the hope of others in him.  Had he felt the sting of youth’s rage to make things better?  No bond of another’s claim withheld him from spending himself to the uttermost.

All this had long been clear.  Long clear also were the two paths trod by the noble army, men and boys.  There were those who preached a more abundant living; and there were those who lived that living....  A glorious thing, indeed, it was for a man so to go his quiet ways that he became an example and model to his fellows, who were made better in that their lives had touched his exemplary one.  But here, alas, was an aspiration for the saints, not for weak men with known bitternesses and passions in their blood, and all youth’s furies hot upon them.  And surely in that other summons there was, besides, the thrill of romance, such as the young love.  There was the trumpeting to high adventure.  Few there were to touch, few to remember, even the saintliest life lived in a noble narrowness, a noble silence.  But the word of truth, spoken from no matter what obscurity, will rise and ring round the world, and remain forever in the pattern of men’s thought.  Here, indeed, was a ’bliss to die with, dim-descried.’...

So it was that one boy had found his heroic ideal, long since, in the grim voice crying in the wilderness.  And in the years the secret picture had grown very clear, curiously full of meaning.  There was descried, like something remembered from another life, an innumerable company upon a rocky plain, a little river rushing by, and in the distance a City....

He had seen something of life in his time at the medical school, and before that, when he was still looking about, trying to decide what he should do.  He had observed in these days of leisure, read, and burned.  And he had come back to his old home-city, overflowing with fine passions, aflame with new-old secrets and forgotten truths.  What speeches there had been to make in those days, what roaring things to write, what shouts to be flung from the house-tops!

And now he had been at home again over a year; he had been right here in the Dabney House a year this month.  And what had he done for his faith?