misfortune into the shade, looked at the remains of his old, old servant with a thrill of awe. Do your best for a hundred years, suffer your worst, take God’s will patiently, go on working and working: and at the end this--this and no more. “He’s got to his rest now, sir,” said the daughter, putting up her apron to her eyes which shed few tears--“we didn’t ought to grumble nor to cry; and I try not. He’s safe now is t’oud man. He’s with mother and the little ones as died years ago. I can’t think as I’ll know ’em when I get there. It’s so long ago, and I’m so old mysel’, they’d never think it was me. But I’ll know father, and father will tell them. I can’t help cryin’ now and again, but I canno’ grudge that he’s got to his rest.” Edgar went out of the house hushed for the moment in all his fever of wild thoughts. Rest! He himself did not want rest. He was too young, too ardent, too full of life to think of it as desirable; but anyhow there was an end to everything: an end--and perhaps a new beginning elsewhere. His mind was a religious mind, and his nature was not one to which real doubts concerning the unseen were possible. But there is something in a great mental shock which unsettles all foundations. At all events, whatever else there might be in life, there was an end--and perhaps a new beginning. And yet what if a man had to work on through all the perplexities of this sick and vexed world for a hundred years?--a world in which you never know who you are, nor what--where all in a moment you may be thrust out of the place you believed you were born in, and your life, all torn across and twisted awry, made to begin anew. How often might a man have to begin anew?--until at last there came that End. He walked along through the woods not consciously remarking anything, and yet noting unconsciously how all the big trunks gleamed in the sunshine, the silvery white lines of the young birches, the happy hush and rustle among the branches. Was it sound, or was it silence? The leaves twinkled in the light, which seemed to fill all their veins with joy, and yet they said Hush, hush! at their highest rapture. Hush, hush! said all nature, except here and there a dry bough which cracked under the flying feet of rabbit or squirrel, a broken branch or a pine cone that fell. The dying, the falling, the injured, and broken, sent harsh, undertones into the harmony; but the living and prospering whispered Hush! Did this thought pass articulately through the young man’s mind as he threaded these woodland paths? No; some broken shadow of it, a kind of rapid suggestion--no more; and moment by moment his painful thoughts recurred more and more to himself.