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The Ball and the Cross

sobriety. “What view do you take of the development?”

Evan threw away his weapon, and, as his custom was, imprisoned his big head in his hands. Then he let them fall and said: “Yes, I know what it means; and I think it is the fairest thing. It is the finger of God—red as blood—still pointing. But now it points to two graves.”

There was a space filled with the sound of the sea, and then MacIan spoke again in a voice pathetically reasonable: “You see, we both saved her—and she told us both to fight—and it would not be just that either should fail and fall alone, while the other——”

“You mean,” said Turnbull, in a voice surprisingly soft and gentle, “that there is something fine about fighting in a place where even the conqueror must die?”

“Oh, you have got it right, you have got it right!” cried out Evan, in an extraordinary childish ecstasy. “Oh, I’m sure that you really believe in God!”

Turnbull answered not a word, but only took up his fallen sword.

For the third time Evan MacIan looked at those three sides of English cliff hung with their

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