We sent Bates back with my grandfather from the boat-house, and Stoddard, Larry and I started across the ice; the light coating of snow made walking comparatively easy. We strode on silently, Stoddard leading. Their plan was to take an accommodation train at the first station beyond Annandale, leave it at a town forty miles away, and then hurry east to an obscure place in the mountains of Virginia, where a religious order maintained a house. There Stoddard promised Larry asylum and no questions asked.

We left the lake and struck inland over a rough country road to the station, where Stoddard purchased tickets only a few minutes before the train whistled.

We stood on the lonely platform, hands joined to hands, and I know not what thoughts in our minds and hearts.

“We’ve met and we’ve said good-by in many odd corners of this strange old world,” said Larry, “and God knows when we shall meet again.”

“But you must stay in America—there must be no sea between us!” I declared.

“Donovan’s sins don’t seem heinous to me! It’s simply that they’ve got to find a scapegoat,”—and Stoddard’s voice was all sympathy and kindness. “It will blow over in time, and Donovan will become an enlightened and peaceable American citizen.”

There was a constraint upon us all at this moment of parting—so many things had happened that day—and when men have shared danger together they are bound by ties that death only can break. Larry’s effort at cheer struck a little hollowly upon us.

“Beware, lad, of women!” he importuned me.

“Humph! You still despise the sex on account of that affair with the colleen of the short upper lip.”

“Verily. And the eyes of that little lady, who guided your grandfather back from the other worlds, reminded me strongly of her! Bah, these women!”

“Precious little you know about them!” I retorted.

“The devil I don’t!”

“No” said Stoddard, “invoke the angels, not the devil!”

“Hear him! Hear him! A priest with no knowledge of the world.”

“Alas, my cloth! And you fling it at me after I have gone through battle, murder and sudden death with you gentlemen!”

“We thank you, sir, for that last word,” said Larry mockingly. “I am reminded of the late Lord Alfred:

“’I waited for the train at Coventry;

I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,

To watch the three tall spires,—’”

he quoted, looking off through the twilight toward St. Agatha’s. “I can’t see a blooming spire!”

The train was now roaring down upon us and we clung to this light mood for our last words. Between men, gratitude is a thing best understood in silence; and these good friends, I knew, felt what I could not say.

“Before the year is out we shall all meet again,” cried Stoddard hopefully, seizing the bags.