But when Maurice came home once more to settle in England with his handsome wife and his children, rich and happy and prosperous, he would fain have taken some new house in London to share with his twin brother, that they might live together; but Stephen would not. Then when Maurice had reasoned and talked with him a long time in vain, pleading by turns the love that had been between them long ago, the loneliness of his brother's estate, and his own desire that they should not separate now, he yielded the contest, and said discontentedly,-- "Have your own way, Steenie, since you will make a solitary bachelor of yourself, but at least give up your useless toiling at the wine- office. To what end do you plod there every day,--you who are wifeless and childless, and have no need of money for yourself? Give me up this great house in which you live all alone, like an owl in an oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in the neighborhood, where I can often come and see you, and where you may spend your days in happiness and comfort." And the little old man shook his head and answered, "Nay, brother Maurice, but I will go away from here to some country village where I am not known, for I have toiled long and wearily all my life, and I cannot rest in peace beside the mill where I have ground down my life so many years. Do not trouble yourself about me, Maurice, I shall find a home for myself." Then they parted. Maurice and his family came to live in the big house at Kensington, for they liked to be near London, and Stephen sold his father's business to another merchant, and went away, Maurice knew not whither, to bury himself and his lost life in some far-off village, until by-and-by the messenger for whom he had waited and yearned so long should come also for him, and the day break and the shadows flee away." Such, reader mine, is in substance the story that Dr. Peyton told me. The words in which he related it I cannot of course quite remember now, so I have put it into words of my own, and here and there I have added somewhat to the dialogue. But the facts and the pathos of the romance are not mine, nor his; they are true, actual realities, such as no dressing of fiction can make more poetical or complete in their sorrowful interest. "It was a long history," said I, "for a dying man to tell."