He looked his compassion, but only asked, "Is there anything else?" "Any special clergyman?" asked the doctor, kindly. She shook her head sadly. "We hadn't been to church yet. I was too tired. If you know of a minister who would come." "It's tough luck," said the doctor again as they went down-stairs together, "to see a nice, likely little chap like that taken away so. And I operated this afternoon on a hardened old reprobate around the corner here, that's played the devil to everybody, and he's going to pull through! It does seem strange. It ain't the way I should run the universe, but I'm thundering glad I 'ain't got the job!" Courtland walked on through the busy streets, thinking that sentence over. He had a dim current of inner perception that suggested there might be another way of looking at the matter; a possibility that the wicked old reprobate had yet something more to learn of life before he went beyond its choices and opportunities; a conviction that if he were called to go he had rather be the little child in his purity than the old man in his deviltry. The sudden cutting down of this lovely child had startled and shocked him. The bereavement of the girl cut him to the heart as if she had belonged to him. It brought the other world so close. It made what had hitherto seemed the big worth-while things of life look so small and petty, so ephemeral! Had he always been giving himself utterly to things that did not count, or was this a perspective all out of proportion, a distorted brain again, through nervous strain and over-exertion? He came presently to a well-known undertaker's, and, stepping in, felt more than ever the borderland-sense. In this silent house of sadness men stepped quietly, gravely, decorously, and served you with courteous sympathy. What was the name of the man who rowed his boat on the River Styx? Yes! Charon! These wise-eyed grave men who continually plied their oars between two worlds! How did they look on life? Were they hardened to their task? Was their gentle gravity all acting? Did earthly things appeal to them? How could they bear it all, this continual settled sadness about the place! The awful hush! The tear-stained faces! The heavy breath of flowers! Not all the lofty marble arches, and beauty of surroundings, not all the soft music of hidden choirs and distant organ up in one of the halls above where a service was even then in progress, could take away the fact of death; the settled, final fact of death! One moment here upon the curbstone, golden hair afloat, eyes alight with joyous greeting, voice of laughter; the next gone, irrevocably gone, "and the place thereof shall know it no more," Where had he heard those words? Strange, sad house of death! Strange, uncertain life to live. Resurrection! Where had he caught that word in carven letters twined among lilies above the marble staircase? Resurrection! Yes, there would need to be if there was to be any hope ever in this world!