"Yes. They were my friends once." "But is your friendship for them stronger than for anybody else?" "It does not stand in the way of my duty to you, Will." "Your _duty_ to me, --" said the other. "Yes. I cannot in this instance call it pleasure." It was the turn of Rufus to hesitate; for the face of his brother expressed an absence of pleasure that to him, in the circumstances, was remarkable. "Then you do not refuse to undertake this job for me?" "I will do what I can," said Winthrop, working at a large forestick on the fire. How Winnie wished he would let it alone, and place himself so that she could see him. "And don't you think there is good prospect of our succeeding?" "If Chancery don't give it you, I'll take it to the Court of Errors," said Winthrop, arranging the log to his satisfaction, and then putting the rest of the fire in order. "I'm sorry to give you trouble, Governor," his brother said thoughtfully. "I'm sorry you've got it to give, Will." But Rufus went on looking into the fire, and seeming to get deeper into the depths of something less bright as he looked. "After all I am much the most to be pitied," he began. "I thought to-day, Governor -- I did not know what would become of me!" "I can tell you that beforehand," said his brother. "You will become, exactly, what you choose to make yourself." "That is what you always say," returned Rufus a little cynically. "That is what I have found in my own practice," said Winthrop. He put up the tongs and took his old seat by Winnie. Rufus looked still into the fire. "I am thrown out of this employment now," he said; -- "I am disgusted with it -- and if I were not, there is no way for me to follow it with advantage." "I am not sorry for that, Will. I never liked it for you, nor you for it." "I have nothing to do. -- I am a loose pin in the Mosaic of society -- the pattern is all made up without me." "What pin has got your place?" said Winthrop. "What do you mean?" "Simply, that as in the nature of things there cannot be too many pins, a pin that is out of place must be such by a derelict of duty." "What is my place?" "If my word would set you in it, I would tell you." "Tell me, and perhaps it will." "I should bid you return to your engineer's work and serve God in it." "Very poor chance for serving God or man, in that work," said Rufus. "Or myself." "And no chance at all so long as you are doing nothing." "I cannot bear to compare myself with you," -- Rufus went on moodily. "Compare yourself with yourself, Will, -- the actual with the possible, -- and then go forward." "What is possible in an engineer's life!" said Rufus. "Everything is possible, in any place where Providence has put you, for the future at least. And the firm purpose of serving God in it, will dignify for the present any life. "'A man that looks on glass "'On it may stay his eye; "'Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, "'And then the heaven espy!'"