The room was utterly empty.

He tiptoed to the door and found even the long bar deserted, littered with tall bottles and overturned glasses.

The cold in his heart increased.

A moment before he had been hand in hand with all the mirth in that place.
Now the men whose laughter he had repeated with smiles, the men against whose sleeves his elbow had touched, were further away from him than they had been when all the snow-covered miles from Morgantown to the school of Father Victor had laid between them.

They were men who might lose themselves in any crowd, but he was set apart with a brand, even as Hurley and Diaz had been set apart that eventful evening.
He had killed a man.