"Five æons! a lifetime at the very least. I have been reading Tennyson on the hills this morning. What a wonderful poet he is! and how much more wonderful as a philosopher! I scarcely regret my forgotten Greek as I read him. To my mind he is the greatest teacher and preacher of our age,--stern and harsh, bitter and cruel sometimes, but always striking home to the very root of truth with an unerring aim. I grow better, and braver, and stronger as I read him. He is not an eloquent wailer of his own woes, like Byron--ah, don't think that I underrate Byron because he is out of fashion; for amidst all the birds that ever sang in the bushes of Parnassus, there is no note so sweet as his to my ear;--and yet Alfred Tennyson has set the stamp of his own suffering on every page of his poetry. Don't talk to me about inner consciousness--or mental imitation. A man must have suffered before he could write 'Locksley Hall;' a man must have been tempted and must have triumphed before he could write 'Love and Duty.' Do you know the poem, Lady Cecil? It is only two or three pages of blank verse; but I have read it half a dozen times this morning, and it seems to me as true as if it had been written with the heart's blood of a brave man. Shall I read it to you?" "If you please." Upon that solitary coast they had no fear of interruption. On one side of them lay stubble-fields and low flat meadows, where the cattle stood to watch them as they passed; on the other, the cool grey sea. The autumn sunshine had faded a little, and there were clouds gathering on the horizon--clouds that Hector and Cecil were too preoccupied to observe. The faint hum of the village died away behind them as they strolled slowly onward. In a desert they could scarcely have been less restrained by any fear of interruption. Hector Gordon read the poem--in a low, earnest voice--in tones whose deep feeling was entirely free from exaggeration. He read very slowly when he came to the last paragraph of the fragment: "Should my shadow cross thy thoughts Too sadly for their peace, remand it thou For calmer hours to memory's darkest hold, If not to be forgotten--not at once-- Not all forgotten." He closed the book abruptly with these words, and for some minutes walked on in silence. This time it was Cecil who was ungracious, since she did not thank her companion for reading the poem. "And now, Lady Cecil, I will tell you my friend's story," said Captain Gordon presently. "It is a common story enough, perhaps; for I suppose there are few lives in which there does not arise the necessity for some great sacrifice." He paused once more, and then began again with an evident effort: