Pagina 745 di 896

Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest competitors

as a youth of great promise, he had followed his father to the

grave. His mother had died, years before. These solemn words,

which had been read at his father's grave, arose in his mind as

he went down the dark streets, among the heavy shadows, with the

moon and the clouds sailing on high above him. "I am the

resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in

me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth

and believeth in me, shall never die."

In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with natural

sorrow rising in him for the sixty-three who had been that day

put to death, and for to-morrow's victims then awaiting their

doom in the prisons, and still of to-morrow's and to-morrow's,

the chain of association that brought the words home, like a

rusty old ship's anchor from the deep, might have been easily

found. He did not seek it, but repeated them and went on.