Doctor Remy flung himself into the first chair that presented itself, and sank into a fit of thought. A vague disquietude oppressed him, notwithstanding that events seemed to be shaping themselves so much in accordance with his wishes. He believed himself to be on the eve of victory, or at least of a certain measure of present success which would insure victory; but both religion and philosophy, he knew, were agreed in representing human expectations as of the nature of the flower of the field, in various danger from the frost, the knife, and the uprooting wind. To this general testimony he could add the special confirmation of his own experience. Like most men, Doctor Remy had the sobering privilege of looking back upon a career of which the successes were few, and the failures and disappointments many. The track of his earthly pilgrimage, thus far, he bitterly thought, was tolerably well strewn with wrecks and abortions. A better man, trying to spell out the meaning and tendency of his life by the aid of a higher inspiration, might have found some comfort in the review, nevertheless. He might have discovered some evidences of harmony and design amid seeming discord and confusion, some solid foundations showing underneath abortive ruins, some steady inward growth of patience and strength and hope, in lieu of an outward harvest of earthly possessions. He might have discerned, with awe and humility, that sometimes he had builded better than he knew, because building in accordance with a certain overruling design, of which he now first began to catch faint and partial glimpses. But such consolation was not allowed to Doctor Remy. In his past, all was incomplete, confused, and unsatisfactory. He had not gained what he sought, and nothing better had come to him through its loss. For many years of time, and an uncommon measure of talent, he had scarce anything to show of what he considered life's highest prizes--wealth, position, influence. He set himself seriously to discover why. And, for one moment, he, too, had a chill perception of a certain unity and sequence in the debris left behind him, unperceived before; which seemed to show that, though he had served his own ends but poorly, he had none the less helped to forward some extended scheme, whereof he had known nothing at the time, and could now discern only the most fragmentary outline. But Doctor Remy quickly shook himself free of this notion, with a smile at his own absurdity.