He gazed a while longer, silently, at the younger man, who
sat, still rocking himself wearily to and fro on the loose earth of the
freshly filled grave. Then he went and laid his hand on his brother's
shoulder. The other started and trembled; he remembered that touch in
days of old.
"Do not fear me," he said, gently and very gravely. "I have kept your
secret twelve years; I will keep it still. Be happy--be as happy as you
can. All I bid of you in return is so to live that in your future your
past shall be redeemed."
The words of the saint to the thief were not more merciful, not more
noble, than the words with which he purchased, at the sacrifice of his
own life, the redemption of his brother's. The other looked at him with
a look that was half of terror--terror at the magnitude of this ransom
that was given to save him from the bondage of evil.
"My God! You cannot mean it! And you----"
"I shall lead the life fittest for me. I am content in it. It is
enough."
The answer was very calm, but it choked him in its utterance. Before his
memory rose one fair, proud face. "Content!" Ah, Heaven! It was the only
lie that had ever passed his lips.
His hand lay still upon his brother's shoulder, leaning more heavily
there, in the silence that brooded over the hushed plains.
"Let us part now, and forever. Leave Algeria at once. That is all I
ask."
Then, without another word that could add reproach or seek for
gratitude, he turned and went away over the great, dim level of the
African waste, while the man whom he had saved sat as in stupor; gazing
at the brown shadows, and the sleeping herds, and the falling stars that
ran across the sky, and doubting whether the voice he had head and the
face upon which he had looked were not the visions of a waking dream.
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