So saying, he burst into a shriek of insane and unearthly laughter, and foaming at the mouth like a madman, turned from me, and fled gibbering into the night. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XII. _I SEE THE BROTHER WHOM WE HAVE ALL LOST._ "You believe probably in God, in Christ, and in Immortality, and you look with joy and gladness to the life beyond the grave. Probably, too, you have suffered, as we all have at some time, from bodily pain, mental affliction or bereavement, until your heart has been broken and crushed, and you have felt that you could bear your burden no longer were it not for the consolation that sorrow can last no longer than life, and that the next world will set this world right. But have you never asked yourself, 'How if it should _not_ be so after all? How if I should open my eyes in the next world to find again all the old sorrows, the old heart-burnings, and the thousand and one trivialities which have made this world so weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable?' Have you never considered that the mere fact of the existence of these sorrows in this world--the only one of which you know anything--is in itself a reason why it is likely that such sorrows, or similar ones, should exist in the world of which you know nothing? And have you never recognised that your failures have been the life-element of your successes, and that, since failure is the law of progress, an existence in which all your endeavours were successful would probably become monotonous and tame?" The above is an extract from a letter (it lies on the desk before me) from one whom I had known in my early boyhood, and who had been for many years my constant companion and friend. Had she continued to be my companion it is possible that my story might have been a different one, but she went to live in America some months before I was twenty, and I never saw her again until the day that she and I stood face to face in the spirit-world--I in hell and she in heaven. After we had exchanged greetings, and each had told the other what was necessary to be known of the past, the conversation turned upon the subjects which we had so often discussed in our letters. "Tell me," I said, "now that you really find yourself in heaven, if you are in every way peacefully and perfectly happy."