This is the answer to the question. A child lives, no doubt, in his surroundings throws himself heart and soul into the pleasures or the sorrows of the moment; and is immersed in the interests of the path which lies straight before him. But this is not all. Talk to any child for a few minutes, and see, if, in the description of his hopes and joys some such phrases as these do not occur: "When I get big;" "When I am a man;" "Some day when I am older." He is looking for something else; he is reaching on to some state he knows not of, but which is to be more perfect than his present one. "Sweetest melodies are those That are by distance made more sweet" There is something else waiting for him--worlds not realized--glories as yet unknown. In what will consist their charm, he knows not; but the vague is the possible, and the unknown is the glorious. So, perhaps, the "Land which is very far off" is more present to him than it is to those of riper years; not so much more shadowy than any other part of the transcendent future lying before him. A child's world is so full of mystery too. Everything is so wonderful and unexplained, that the "Things unseen and eternal" are scarcely more incomprehensible than the things unseen and temporal. Where everything is so strange, one thing is not much more strange than another. Look how many inexplicable things are occurring every day around him. Take the mysteries of birth and death, for instance. How soon he grows familiar with them. In a few days, the new little brother or sister seems as though it had always been there; and when the loss does not occur _in_ the house, or affect him very nearly, he seldom asks questions after the rush that follows the first announcement, but contents himself with a general résumé of the occurrence in some such a train of thought as this: "Poor mamma was crying yesterday; and we are all going to have black frocks." He takes everything upon trust, believing implicitly everything which is told him: he never cavils or argues, or reasons. He believes his elders infallible--in fact, he must: have they not proved right over and over again? Not being able to understand, he _must_ trust; and to a boundless faith and a vivid imagination _all_ things are possible! * * * * * It may be that some such ideas as these did at last float across the mind of Sir Everard, as he sat by the boy, who from first to last had been misunderstood. One day Humphrey woke with a start, as if from a dream, and said eagerly: "Didn't you promise they shouldn't make me well?" "Yes, my darling." "I thought for a moment--or I dreamt--that I was getting well--and--it was----" "It was what?" asked Sir Everard, trembling lest a wish for life should be springing up in the boy's breast, and that the regrets, whose non-existence he had marvelled at, should be going to overpower him at last. "It was so horrible!" said the boy.