And Robert Hendricks, when I see you acting as you've acted just now, sir, this very minute in point of fact, I may say, sir, that you're almost honest enough to be a Democrat, sir--like your sainted father." The colonel held the young man's hand affectionately for a time and then dropped it, sighing, "Ah, sir--if it wasn't for your damned Yankee free schools and your damned Yankee surroundings, what a Democrat you would have made, Robert--what a grand Democrat!" The colonel waved his silver tobacco box proudly and made for the door and left Hendricks sitting at his desk, drumming on the board with one hand, and resting his head in the other, looking longingly into the abyss from which he had escaped; for the lure of the danger still fluttered his soul.
Strength had come to him in that hour to resist the temptation.

But the temptation still was there.

For he was a young man, giving up for an intangible thing called justice the dearest thing in his life.

He had opened the door of his life's despair and had walked in, as much like a man as he could, but he kept looking back with a heavy heart, hungering with his whole body and most of his soul for all that he had renounced.

And so, staring at the light of other days, and across the shadow of what might have been, he let ten long minutes tick past toward the inevitable hour, and then he rose and put his hand to the plough for the long furrow.
They are all off the stage now, as Bob Hendricks is standing in the front door of the bank that August night with his watch in his hand reckoning the minutes--some four thousand three hundred of them--until Molly Culpepper will pass from him forever, and as the stage is almost deserted, we may peep under the rear curtain for a minute.