Observe how great an issue lay in these little things: these little and obscure good deeds! What man save Mr Barnett had understood, or could understand, the full meaning of the M’Korio? What chances had any vision of his against the opposition of all that limited, monied, hard “good sense” whereby Mr Burden despised the wealth latent in the colony with which he alone traded? And yet Mr Burden’s voice in this matter would certainly lead the city! What ambassador could have been found to persuade a merchant of Mr Burden’s kind that the future of a great province depended upon such a man as Mr Barnett, whose character could not but have affected him as alien, and perhaps as repulsive? Cosmo alone could bridge that gulf. His lethargy, if I may use the term, would have proved an insuperable obstacle, and all that he had heard from his young associates of “honour” would have confused his judgment, had not that closer tie been created in a few predestined hours by Mr Harbury’s trained, courteous, and ready heart. Each of us to-day in whatever way we have immixed with that Imperial adventure as shareholders or plain citizens; as preachers, journalists, or perhaps in some sweet womanly way; every soldier who has returned without stain from the Delta; every administrator of every grade, nay, every holder of every salaried office in the M’Korio, owes something to that half hour when so considerable a sum as £1250 was lent without any kind of fee or troublesome inquiry at a nominal rate of fifteen per cent. to rescue a fellow-being from dishonour. How truly does not the poet put it in a verse, the sense of which I shall always retain, though many of its words escape me:— “_Let others ... ... or play the meaner part; But the little seed of one good deed Can...._” I remember no more than the last word, which is “_heart_.” FOOTNOTES: [5] “... As its name implies,” Butterworth’s “Geography of the Empire,” p. 224. CHAPTER IV In every tragedy connected with old age, the hardening which is the curse of age appears. The picture which Mr Burden presented at this moment is the more vivid in my memory from the suddenness with which it was extinguished. I desire to describe him as accurately as I may for the sake of that posterity which must learn, not only what his virtues were, but also in what way, and through what weakness, he failed upon the chief occasion of his life. It is a lesson of the highest moment.