“I’m not playing the part of the good Samaritan, David.  I’ve got a personal and a selfish reason for wanting you with me.  It may be possible—­just possible, I say—­that I need you even more than you will need me.”  He held out his hand.  “Let me have your checks and I’ll go ahead to the baggage car and arrange to have your dunnage thrown off with mine at the Frenchman’s.”

David gave him the checks, and sat down after he had gone.  He began to realize that, for the first time in many months, he was taking a deep and growing interest in matters outside his own life.  The night and its happenings had kindled a strange fire within him, and the warmth of this fire ran through his veins and set his body and his brain tingling curiously.  New forces were beginning to fight his own malady.  As he sat alone after Father Roland had gone, his mind had dragged itself away from the East; he thought of a woman, but it was the woman in the third coach back.  Her wonderful eyes haunted him—­their questing despair, the strange pain that seemed to burn like glowing coals in their depths.  He had seen not only misery and hopelessness in them; he had seen tragedy; and they troubled him.  He made up his mind to tell Father Roland about her when he returned from the baggage car, and take him to her.

And who was Father Roland?  For the first time he asked himself the question.  There was something of mystery about the Little Missioner that he found as strange and unanswerable as the thing he had seen in the eyes of the woman in the third car back.  Father Roland had not been asleep when he looked in and saw him hunched down in his corner near the window, just as a little later he had seen the woman crumpled down in hers.  It was as if the same oppressing hand had been upon them in those moments.  And why had Father Roland asked him of all men to go with him as a comrade into the North?  Following this he asked himself the still more puzzling question:  Why had he accepted the invitation?

He stared out into the night, as if that night held an answer for him.  He had not noticed until now that the storm had ceased its beating against the window.  It was not so black outside.  With his face close to the glass he could make out the dark wall of the forest.  From the rumble of the trucks under him he knew that the two engines were making good time.  He looked at his watch.  It was a quarter of twelve.  They had been travelling for half an hour and he figured that the divisional point ahead would be reached by midnight.  It seemed a very short time after that when he heard the tiny bell in his watch tinkle off the hour of twelve.  The last strokes were drowned in a shrill blast of the engine whistle, and a moment later he caught the dull glow of lights in the hollow of a wide curve the train was making.