"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.
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