For a time he was content to let himself go on the tranquil current of this existence; but although his auditors gave him for the most part an encouraging attention, which, in some, went the length of really brilliant and helpful suggestion, he gradually felt a recurrence of his old doubts.  Either his hearers were not sincere, or else they had less power to aid him than they boasted.  His interminable conferences resulted in nothing, and as the benefit of the long rest made itself felt, it produced an increased mental lucidity which rendered inaction more and more unbearable.  At length he discovered that on certain days visitors from the outer world were admitted to his retreat; and he wrote out long and logically constructed relations of his crime, and furtively slipped them into the hands of these messengers of hope.

This occupation gave him a fresh lease of patience, and he now lived only to watch for the visitors’ days, and scan the faces that swept by him like stars seen and lost in the rifts of a hurrying sky.

Mostly, these faces were strange and less intelligent than those of his companions.  But they represented his last means of access to the world, a kind of subterranean channel on which he could set his “statements” afloat, like paper boats which the mysterious current might sweep out into the open seas of life.

One day, however, his attention was arrested by a familiar contour, a pair of bright prominent eyes, and a chin insufficiently shaved.  He sprang up and stood in the path of Peter McCarren.

The journalist looked at him doubtfully, then held out his hand with a startled deprecating, “Why—?”

“You didn’t know me?  I’m so changed?” Granice faltered, feeling the rebound of the other’s wonder.

“Why, no; but you’re looking quieter—­smoothed out,” McCarren smiled.

“Yes:  that’s what I’m here for—­to rest.  And I’ve taken the opportunity to write out a clearer statement—­”

Granice’s hand shook so that he could hardly draw the folded paper from his pocket.  As he did so he noticed that the reporter was accompanied by a tall man with grave compassionate eyes.  It came to Granice in a wild thrill of conviction that this was the face he had waited for...

“Perhaps your friend—­he is your friend?—­would glance over it—­or I could put the case in a few words if you have time?” Granice’s voice shook like his hand.  If this chance escaped him he felt that his last hope was gone.  McCarren and the stranger looked at each other, and the former glanced at his watch.

“I’m sorry we can’t stay and talk it over now, Mr. Granice; but my friend has an engagement, and we’re rather pressed—­”

Granice continued to proffer the paper.  “I’m sorry—­I think I could have explained.  But you’ll take this, at any rate?”

The stranger looked at him gently.  “Certainly—­I’ll take it.”  He had his hand out.  “Good-bye.”