"You see, I saw such strange and impossible things there," he went on, "that nothing seems strange nor impossible. It was like an allegory: Tom himself was an allegory. The birds came to his bidding, the shy creatures of the forest were his friends. It was no miracle: it was but what we all could do, if we realised what he realised, and knew as he knew the brotherhood of all that lives. He put into practice the theory of Darwinism that no one in theory denies. The living things were his brothers and his cousins: they knew it, too. But from one huge fact, the fact of sorrow and pain, he turned aside, and, so I believe, it all came to him in a flash, making him perfect. And it came in material form, at least it was so material that it could bruise his flesh. It seems cruel; but--oh, mother, if you had seen his face afterwards, you would have known that the hand that made him suffer comforted him when he had learned what the suffering had to teach him. It could have been done, I must suppose, in no other way." Then for a little the strong man was very weak, and he broke down and wept. But one who weeps while eyes so tender watch, weeps tears that are not bitter, or at least are sweetened, each one, as it falls. Then again he went on: much as he had told, there was all to tell yet, yet that all was but short--a few words were sufficient. "And so my lesson came home to me," he said. "A month ago I said, as you know, 'I will hate, I will injure.' A fortnight ago I said, 'What good is that?' But now, when poor Tom, who was all kind and all gentle, had to be taught like that, with those battering hoofs, that pain must be and that one must accept it and sorrow, and not leave them out of life, now I say, 'Can I help? May not I bear a little of it?'" He got up. "You don't know me," he said. "I don't know myself. But I suppose this is how such a thing comes to one. I have been in an outer darkness: I have been black and bitter and all my life before that I was hard. That, I suppose, was needful for me. I don't think I am going to be a prig, but if that is so, perhaps it doesn't much matter. But I do know this, that I am sorry for poor things." Mrs. Home said nothing for the moment; then she turned her eyes away as she spoke. "You have not heard then, dear?" she said. "I have heard nothing." "It was in the paper this evening," she said. "I know no more than that. Evelyn was shot in the face yesterday." Then her voice quivered. "They think he will live," she said. "But they know he will be blind. Oh, Philip, think of Evelyn blind!" [Illustration: text decoration] TWENTIETH