The Fighting Chance

He leaned heavily toward Siward, stretching out his powerful arm: "You marry her; and keep open your spiritual communication through her, if that is the way it has been established, and hang on to your God that way until your body is dead! I tell you, Siward, to marry her. I don't care how you do it; I don't care how you get her. Take her! Yours, of the two, is the stronger character, or she would not be where she is. Does she want what you cannot give her? Cure that desire--it is more contemptible than the craving that shatters you! I say, let the one-eyed lead the blind. Miracles are worked out by mathematics--if you have faith enough."

He rose, striding the length of the room once or twice, turned, holding out his broad hand: "Good-bye," he said. "Harrington is about due at my office; Quarrier will probably turn up to-night. I am not vindictive; I shall be just with them--as just as I know how, which is to be as merciful as I dare be. Good-bye, Siward. I--I believe you and she are going to get well."

When he had gone, Siward lay back in his chair, very still, eyes closed. A faint colour had mounted to his face and remained there.

It was late in the afternoon when he went down-stairs, using his crutches lightly. Gumble handed him a straw hat and opened the door, and Siward cautiously descended the stoop, stood for a few moments on the sidewalk, looking up at the blue sky, then wheeled and slowly made his way toward Washington Square. The avenue was deserted; his own house appeared to be the only remaining house still open in all that old-fashioned but respectable quarter.

He swung leisurely southward, a slim, well-built young fellow, strangely out of place on crutches. The poor always looked at him; beggars never importuned him, yet found him agreeable to watch. Children, who seldom look up into the air far enough to notice grown people, always became conscious of him when he passed; often smiled, sometimes spoke. As for stray curs and tramp cats, they were for ever making advances. As long as he could remember, there was scarcely a week in town but some homeless dog attached himself to Siward's heels, sometimes trotting several blocks, sometimes following him home--where the outcast was always cared for, washed, fed, and ultimately shipped out to the farm, where scores of these "fresh-air" dogs resided on his bounty and rolled in luxury on his lawns.

Cats, too, were prone to notice him, rising as he passed to hoist an interrogative tail and make tentative observations.