As Burns drove away he was feeling a sense of loneliness as unpleasant as
it was unexpected, and found himself longing to get back to a certain
pair of arms whose hold was a panacea for every ache.
"He thinks he owes it all to me," he was saying by and by, when this
desirable condition had been fulfilled. "But maybe I don't owe something
to him. If the sight of a plucky fight for self-control is a bracing
tonic to any man I've had one in watching him. I never saw a finer
display of will against heavy odds. Another man in the shape he was in
last spring would have gone under."
"It would be pretty difficult, I think, dear," said his wife, softly
touching his thick locks, as his head lay on her lap, "for any man to go
under with you pulling him out."
"I didn't pull him out. No man in creation can pull another out, no
matter how strong his effort. The chap that's in the current has got to
do every last ounce of the pulling himself. I don't say God can't help,
for I'm positive He can, but I don't think a man can do much. And it's my
belief that even God helps chiefly through making the man realize that he
can help himself."
"For which office he sometimes appoints a man as his human instrument,
doesn't he?"
Burns turned his head and touched his lips to the hand which had laid
itself against his cheek.
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