self-helpful, cheerful, fate-defiant. In one respect, indeed, he knew less than Ulysses, and was more of a heathen than he; fo he knew not what Ulysses knew, that a heavenly guide was with him in his wanderings; still less what Ulysses knew not, that what he called the malicious sport of fortune was, in truth, the earnest education of a Father: but who will blame him for getting strength and comfort from such merely natural founts, or say that the impulse came from below, and not from above, which made him say—

"Brave old world she is, after all, and right-well made; and looks right well to-day, in her go-to-meeting clothes; and plenty of room and chance in her for a brave man to earn his bread, if he will but go right on about his business, as the birds and the flowers do, instead of peaking and pining over what people think of him, like that miserable Briggs. Hark to that jolly old missel-thrush below! he's had his nest to build, and his supper to earn, and his young ones to feed, and all the crows and kites in the wood to drive away, the sturdy John Bull that he is; and yet he can find time to sing as merrily as an abbot, morning and evening, since he sang the new year in last January. And why should not I?"

Let him be a while; there are sounds of deeper meaning in the air, if his heart had ears to hear them; far off church-bells chiming to even-song; hymn-tunes floating up the glen from the little chapel in the vale. He may learn what they, too, mean some day. Honour to him at least, that he has learnt what the missel-thrush below can tell him. If he accept cheerfully and manfully the things which he does see, he will be all the more able to enter hereafter into the deeper mystery of things unseen. The road toward true faith and reverence for God's kingdom of heaven does not lie through Manichæan contempt and slander of God's kingdom of earth.

So let him stride over the down, enjoying the mere fact of life, and health, and strength, and whistling shrilly to the bird below, who trumpets out a few grand ringing notes, and repeats them again and again, in saucy self-satisfaction; and then stops to listen for the answer to this challenge; and then rattles on again with a fresh passage, more saucily than ever, in a tone which seems to ask,-"You could sing that, eh? but can you sing this, my fine fellow on the down above?" So he seems to Tom to say; and, tickled with the fancy, Tom laughs, and whistles, and laughs, and has just time to compose his features as he steps up to the farm-yard gate.

Let him be, I say again. He might have better Sunday thoughts; perhaps he will have some day. At least he is a man, and a brave one; and as the greater contains the less,

surely before a man can be a good man, he must be a brave one first, much more a man at all. Cowards, old Odin held, inevitably went to the very bottom of Hela-pool, and by no possibility, unless of course they became brave at last, could rise out of that everlasting bog, but sank whining lower and lower like mired cattle, to all eternity in the unfathomable peat-slime. And if the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Revelation, and the eighth verse, is to be taken as it stands, their doom has not altered since Odin's time, unless to become still worse.

Tom came up, over the home-close and through the bartongate, through the farm-yard, and stopped at last at the porch. The front door was open, and the door beyond it; and ere he knocked, he stopped, looking in silence at a picture which held him spell-bound for a moment by its rich and yet quiet beauty.

Tom was no artist, and knew no more of painting, in spite of his old friendship with Claude, than was to be expected of a keen and observant naturalist who had seen half the globe. Indeed, he had been in the habit of snubbing Claude's profession; and of arriving, on pre-Raphaelite grounds, at a by no means pre-Raphaelite conclusion. "A picture, you say, is worth nothing unless you copy Nature. But you can't copy her. She is ten times more gorgeous than any man can dare represent her. Ergo, every picture is a failure; and the nearest hedge-bush is worth all your galleries together"-a syllogism of sharp edge, which he would back up by Byron's

"I've seen much finer women, ripe and real,

Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal."

But here was one of Nature's own pictures, drawn and coloured by more than mortal hand, and framed over and above, ready to his eye, by the square of the dark doorway, beyond which all was flooded with the full glory of the low northwestern sun.

A dark oak-ribbed ceiling; walls of pale fawn-yellow; an open window, showing a corner of rich olive-stone wall, enamelled with golden lichens, orange and green combs of polypody, pink and grey tufts of pellitory, all glowing in the sunlight.

Above the window-sill rose a bush of maiden-blush roses; a tall spire of blue monkshood; and one head of scarlet lychnis, like a spark of fire; and, behind all, the dark blue sea, which faded into the pale-blue sky.

At the window stood a sofa of old maroon leather, its dark hue throwing out in strong relief two figures who sat upon it. And when T had once looked at them, he looked at nothing

lse

There sat the sick girl, her head nestling upon the shoulder of Grace Harvey; a tall, delicate thing of seventeen, with thin white cheeks, the hectic spot aflame on each, and long fair curls, which mingled lovingly with Grace's dark tresses, as they sat cheek against cheek, and hand in hand. Her eyes were closed; Tom thought at first that she was asleep but there was a quiet smile about her pale lips; and every now and then her left hand left Grace's, to move toward a leaf full of strawberries which lay on Grace's lap; and Tom could see that she was listening intently to Grace, who told and told, in that sweet, measured voice of hers, her head erect, her face in the full blaze of sunshine, her great eyes looking out far away beyond the sea, beyond the sky, into some infinite which only she beheld.

Tom had approached unheard, across the farm-yard straw. He stood and looked his fill. The attitude of the two girls was so graceful, that he was loth to disturb it; and loth, too, to disturb a certain sunny calm which warmed at once and softened his stout heart.

He wished, too-he scarce knew why-to hear what Grace was saying; and as he listened, her voice was so distinct and delicate in its modulations, that every word came clearly to his

ear.

It was the beautiful old legend of St. Dorothea :—

"So they did all sorts of dreadful things to her, and then led her away to die; and they stood laughing there. But after a little time there came a boy, the prettiest boy that ever was seen on earth, and in his hand a basket full of fruits and flowers, more beautiful than tongue can tell. And he said, 'Dorothea sends you these, out of the heavenly garden which she told you ofwill you believe her now?' And then, before they could reply, he vanished away. And Theophilus looked at the flowers, and tasted the fruit and a new heart grew up within him; and he said, 'Dorothea's God shall be my God, and I will die for Him like her.'

"So you see, darling, there are sweeter fruits than these, and gayer flowers, in the place to which you go; and all the lovely things in this world here will seem quite poor and worthless beside the glory of that better land which He will show you : and yet you will not care to look at them; for the sight of Him will be enough, and you will care to think of nothing else."

"And you are sure He will accept me, after all?" asked the sick girl, opening her eyes, and looking up at Grace. She saw Thurnall standing in the doorway, and gave a little scream. Tom came forward, bowing. "I am very sorry to have dis turbed you. I suspect Miss Harvey was giving you bette medicine than I can give."

Now why did Tom say that, to whom the legend of St. Dorothea, and, indeed, that whole belief in a better land, was as a dream fit only for girls?

Not altogether because he must need say something civil. True, he felt, on the whole, about the future state as Goethe did "To the able man this world is not dumb: why should he ramble off into eternity? Such incomprehensible subjects lie too far off, and only disturb our thoughts, if made the subject of daily meditation." That there was a future state he had no doubt. Our having been born once, he used to say, is the strongest possible presumption in favour of our being born again; and probably, as nature always works upward and develops higher forms, in some higher state. Indeed, for aught he knew, the old ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs might be alive now, as lions—or as men. He himself, indeed, he had said, ere now, had been probably a pterodactyle of the Lias, neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring, but crocodile and bat in one, able alike to swim, or run, or fly, eat anything, and live in any element. Still it was no concern of his. He was here; and here was his business. He had not thought of this life before he came into it; and it would be time enough to think of the next life when he got into it. Besides, he had all a doctor's dislike of those terrors of the unseen world, with which some men are wont to oppress still more failing nature, and break the bruised reed, His business was to cure his patients' bodies; and if he could not do that, at least to see that life was not shortened in them by nervous depression and anxiety. Accustomed to see men of every character die under every possible circumstance, he had come to the conclusion that the "safety of a man's soul" could by no possibility be inferred from his death-bed temper. The vast majority, good or bad, died in peace: why not let them die so? If nature kindly took off the edge of sorrow, by blunting the nervous system, what right had man to interfere with so merciful an arrangement? Every man, he held in his easy optimism, would go where he ought to go: and it could be no possible good to him-indeed, it might be a very bad thing for him, as in this life-to go where he ought not to go. So he used to argue, with three-fourths of mankind, mingling truth and falsehood and would, on these grounds, have done his best to turn the dissenting preacher out of that house, had he found him in it. But to-day he was in a more lenient, perhaps in a more huraan, and therefore more spiritual mood. It was all very well for him, full of life, and power, and hope, to look on death in that cold, careless way; but for that poor young thing, cut off just as life opened from all that made life lovely-was not death for her a painful, ugly anomaly? Could she be

blamed, if she shuddered at going forth into the unknown blank, she knew not whither? All very well for the old emperor of Rome, who had lived his life and done his work, to play with the dreary question—

Animula, vagula, blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis,
Quæ nunc abibis in loca,
Rigidula, nudula, pallida ?—"

But she, who had lived no life, and done no work-only had pined through weary years of hideous suffering; crippled and ulcerated with scrofula, now dying of consumption: was it not a merciful dream, a beautiful dream, a just dream—so beautiful and just, that perhaps it might be true,-that in some fairer world, all this, and more, might be made up to her? If not, was it not a mistake and an injustice, that she should ever have come into the world at all? And was not Grace doing a rational as well as a loving work, in telling her, under whatsoever symbols, that such a home of rest and beauty awaited her? It was not the sort of place to which he expected, perhaps even wished, to go: but it fitted well enough with a young girl's hopes, a young girl's powers of enjoyment. Let it be; perhaps there was such a place, why not?-fitted for St. Dorothea, and those cut off in youth like her; and other places fit for such as he. And he spoke more tenderly than usual (though he was never untender, as he said,

"And you feel better to-day? I am sure you must, with such a kind friend, to tell you such sweet tales."

"I do not feel better, thank you.

And why should I wish to do so? You all take too much trouble about me; why do you want to keep me here?"

"We are loth to lose you; and besides, while you can be kept here, it is a sign that you ought to be here."

"So Grace tells me. Yes, I will be patient, and wait till He has done His work. I am more patient now; am I not, Grace?" And she fondled Grace's hand, and looked up in her face.

Yes," said Grace, who was standing near, with downcast face, trying to avoid Tom's eye. Yes, you are very good; but you must not talk:" but the girl went on, with kindling eye,

"Ah-I was very fretful at first, because I could not go to heaven at once: but Grace showed me how it was good to be here, as well as there, as long as He thought that I might be made perfect by sufferings. And since then, my pain has become quite pleasant to me, and I am ready to wait and bear-wait and bear."

"You must not talk--see, you are beginning to cough,” said