window, and Joshua crept quietly to the water-jug and sprinkled some water over his face. Then, his mind being calmer, he knelt down by the side of the bed; and Dan, who had not slept, raised himself upon his elbow, and, seeing his friend in prayerful attitude, smiled softly to himself and was glad. CHAPTER XI. WHAT OCCURRED AFTER JOSHUA'S DEPARTURE. The nicest mathematical calculations of the probability of events are not uncommonly subjected to shocks which, to those dull and unreflective persons who cannot distinguish between rule and exceptions, seem to give the lie to science. Yesterday the world was at peace, and rulers and politicians were eloquent in phrases of friendship and goodwill to the inhabitants of every nation on the face of the earth. To-day the world is at war, and rulers and politicians, hot with wrath at a cunningly-provoked insult, are eager to avenge traditional wrongs at any expense of blood and human suffering, and to resent what they choose to call national humiliation. Yesterday two nations clasped hands, and smiled upon one another. Suddenly, as thus they stood, a fire--kindled by the worst of secret passions and by the lust of self-aggrandizement--flashed into their palms, and they threw each other off, and drew the sword. A more serious shock was never given to the calculation of the probable course of events. Yesterday peace was certain, and men were preparing to gather the harvests; today war is raging, and the cornfields are steeped in blood. So have I seen in a far-off country--now almost in its infancy, but whose growth is swift, and whose manhood will be grand--a sluggish river rolling lazily to the sea. Walking inland along its banks, now broadened by fair plains, now narrowed by towering ranges, I have come suddenly upon the confluence of it and another river, whose waters, springing from cloud-tipped mountains of snow, rush laughingly down the grand old rocks. Here, in the narrow pass where the rivers meet, the gray sluggish stream of a sleeper opposes itself to the marvellously blue waters of a passionate life. One, dull and inert, rolls like a soulless sluggard sullenly to the sea; the other, with its snow-fringed lines reflected in its restless depths of blue, leaps and laughs as it flashes onwards, like a godlike hero, to the mightier waters of the Pacific. But a few hundred yards away from the confluence of the streams, no stranger, walking thitherward, could imagine the singular and grand contest that is eternally waging in that wonderful pass; and when he comes upon it suddenly, admiration impels him to stand in silent worship.