Life, unfortunately, is for most of us no well-arranged story with a happy termination; it is a chequered affair of shade and sun, and for one beam of light there come very often wide patches of shadow. Men seem to have known this so far back as Shakespeare’s time, and to have observed that one woe trod on another’s heels, to have battled not with a single wave, but with a ‘sea of troubles,’ and to have remarked that ‘sorrows come not singly, but in battalions.’ However, owing I believe chiefly to his own self-command, and to his untiring faculty for taking infinite pains over his work, Derrick did not break down, but pleasantly cheated my expectations. I was not called on to nurse him through a fever, and consumption did not mark him for her own. In fact, in the matter of illness, he was always a most prosaic, unromantic fellow, and never indulged in any of the euphonious and interesting ailments. In all his life, I believe, he never went in for anything but the mumps--of all complaints the least interesting--and, may be, an occasional headache. However, all this is a digression. We at length reached London, and Derrick took a room above mine, now and then disturbing me with nocturnal pacings over the creaking boards, but, on the whole, proving himself the best of companions. If I wrote till Doomsday, I could never make you understand how the burning of his novel affected him--to this day it is a subject I instinctively avoid with him--though the re-written ‘At Strife’ has been such a grand success. For he did re-write the story, and that at once. He said little; but the very next morning, in one of the windows of our quiet sitting-room, often enough looking despairingly at the grey monotony of Montague Street, he began at ‘Page I, Chapter I,’ and so worked patiently on for many months to re-make as far as he could what his drunken father had maliciously destroyed. Beyond the unburnt paragraph about the attack on Mondisfield, he had nothing except a few hastily scribbled ideas in his note-book, and of course the very elaborate and careful historical notes which he had made on the Civil War during many years of reading and research--for this period had always been a favourite study with him. But, as any author will understand, the effort of re-writing was immense, and this, combined with all the other troubles, tried Derrick to the utmost. However, he toiled on, and I have always thought that his resolute, unyielding conduct with regard to that book proved what a man he was. Chapter VIII. “How oft Fate’s sharpest blow shall leave thee strong, With some re-risen ecstacy of song.” F. W. H. Myers. As the autumn wore on, we heard now and then from old Mackrill the doctor. His reports of the Major were pretty uniform. Derrick used to hand them over to me when he had read them; but, by tacit consent, the Major’s name was never mentioned.