ambitions, its sweetness and its raptures, and he fortified his soul against despair until the sun had reached high noon. It sloped down its slow descent, and his life was ebbing away and his heart was faltering, and he needed stronger stimulants to make him stand the struggle until the end of the day had come. He thought of his far-off home, the blessed house resting in tranquil peace with the roses climbing to its door, and the trees whispering to its windows, and dozing in the sunshine, the orchard and the little brook running like a silver thread through the forest. “If I live till sundown I will see it again. I will walk down the shady lane: I will open the battered gate, and the mocking-bird shall call to me from the orchard, and I will drink again at the old mossy spring.” And he thought of the wife who had come from the neighboring farmhouse and put her hand shyly in his, and brought sweetness to his life and light to his home. “If I live till sundown I shall look once more into her deep and loving eyes and press her brown head once more to my aching breast.” And he thought of the old father, patient in prayer, bending lower and lower every day under his load of sorrow and old age. “If I but live till sundown I shall see him again and wind my strong arm about his feeble body, and his hands shall rest upon my head while the unspeakable healing of his blessing falls into my heart.” And he thought of the little children that clambered on his knees and tangled their little hands into his heart-strings, making to him such music as the world shall not equal or heaven surpass. “If I live till sundown they shall again find my parched lips with their warm mouths, and their little fingers shall run once more over my face.” And he then thought of his old mother, who gathered these children about her and breathed her old heart afresh in their brightness and attuned her old lips anew to their prattle, that she might live till her big boy came home. “If I live till sundown I will see her again, and I will rest my head at my old place on her knees, and weep away all memory of this desolate night.” And the Son of God, who had died for men, bending from the stars, put the hand that had been nailed to the cross on ebbing life and held on the staunch until the sun went down and the stars came out, and shone down in the brave man’s heart and blurred in his glistening eyes, and the lanterns of the surgeons came and he was taken from death to life.