This man-at-arms had a religion too. It was not a faith of the lamp or of the blessed by-and-by. It was not a soldier’s code or a code of honor. It was sterner and more solitary, a doctrine shorn of pity even for oneself but which touched somehow, David sensed, upon a truth as immutable as death and as primal as creation. David resolved that he would give all he had, and all he ever would have, to acquire that which this man-at-arms possessed—this wisdom, this understanding, the knowledge of these mysteries. He would die to be and to become, himself, like this man.
