shoulders of men momentarily forgetful or caught in
a trap of circumstance.

Yet he had, without effort, without deprivation,
freed Alexander Crandall. He could have freed
his brother, given him the chance his rebellious soul
demanded, with equal ease. He had not done that
last, he had said at the time, because of the numbers
that would immediately besiege him for assistance.
This, he realized, was not a valid objection -- the
money was his to dispose of as he saw fit. He possessed
large sums lying at the Stenton banks, automatically
returning him interest, profit; thrown in
the scale their weight would go far toward balancing
the greed of Valentine Simmons, of Cannon.

He considered these facts totally ignorant of the
fact that they were but the reflection of his own inchoate
need born in the anguish of his wife's death;
he was not conscious of the veering of his sensibility --
sharpened by the hoarse cry from the stiffening
lips of Lettice -- to the world without. He
thought of the possibility before him neither as a
scheme of philanthropy nor of revenge, nor of rehabilitation.
He considered it solely in the light
of his own experience, as a practical measure to give
men their chance, their own, in Greenstream. The
cost to himself would be small -- his money had
faded from his conceptions, his necessities, as absolutely
as though it had been fairy gold dissolved by

[[306]]

p305 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p306w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p307

v?