It was a trying visit to pay. He was a tenderhearted man, and could not endure to look upon distress. And, judging from people generally, he expected to find the Landors overwhelmed by the blow which had fallen upon them, Mr. Landor in depths of despair, Mrs. Landor in floods of tears. She had kept up, it was true, while calling on his wife, doubtless for her sake, but that she should continue to keep up was beyond the bounds of reasonable expectation. Colin wondered sorrowfully what he should say to comfort them. Of course Mrs. Landor would "trust." Both of them would of course "trust." He felt no doubt on that head. He always asserted the fact of his own "trust," no matter how dismally certain he might feel that everything was going wrong, no matter how dolefully hopeless he might be of any help arriving in time to tide him over rocks ahead. His idea of trust was vague, and therefore was quite compatible with a general hopelessness. By the time he reached the Rectory, his face had grown portentously long over the thought of his friends' grief. Rather oddly, this blow to them had acted with a rousing force upon himself. He had not for months felt so hopeful, so light-hearted about his own affairs. It was almost as if he had foreseen that something would happen, and had only been mistaken in supposing it to be a something concerning himself. Probably a truer explanation would be that Colin Mackenzie, after repeated attacks of severe influenza, coming upon long years of hard work, had fallen into a dyspeptic and nervous condition of body, which condition had reacted on the mind, rendering him unable to take a fair and reasonable view of things in general, more especially of business questions. As Mrs. Landor had once said, molehills grew to mountains in his eyes, and a usually unselfish nature had become for the time morbidly self-centred—a state of things largely physical, but not on that account altogether free from blame. Wakened now by the shock of his friends' trouble, he looked back upon his own past mental condition with a curious sense of surprise, almost of disgust. What could have made him talk as he had done to Euphrasia, the day before she left home? Absurd,—when really there had been no sufficient cause, but only some needful business uncertainties, and a desperate fit of the "blues," inclining him to see everything on its darkest side. Dyspepsia, of course, as Dr. North had at the time assured him. While Colin, because of that same dyspepsia, had counted himself wiser than any number of doctors, and had refused to believe the explanation. Now he knew better! Poor little Eyebright! How she might have worried herself! Only of course she had not, or she would have written oftener. No doubt she had not grasped his full meaning. Still, he might have spoilt her visit with his ill-considered remarks. He would write at once, this very evening—cheerily, and in a different strain.