I started, and woke again. The Professor's notes were still under my eyes, and I read the words, "Lose yourself and live as if you were one of the others. Exalted on this pinnacle you are prepared for any existence; you have learnt your path through eternity, and the world and its vicissitudes may sweep by you like winds past a statue." As I slowly thought over all the dream, and comprehended its remarkable character, I conceived it as a revelation. "The highest things,--I have found them at last!" I exultantly cried, in a final enthusiasm--"the total subjection of self and obedience of the whole life to Reason! What shall I care more for events and opinions, or any matter that but concerns myself and a fleeting world! I will seek in my actions ever the greater, finer, nobler thing for all, and the rule will be aim sufficient!" "I saw that DUTY is the Secret of the World." It was only a question to choose my largest, finest, noblest field of work for all. Difficulties disappeared, and the great aim soon appeared before me of the cultivation of the national spirit. The nation must found and shape its own work on the same deep idea. CHAPTER XLIV. DAUGHTER OF THE GODS. "Soft was the breath of balmy spring In that fair month of May" --GEO MURRAY. Time flew brightly for some days, as an early spring, having poured its thousand rivulets out of the melting snows, began to dry the soil and instil into the willows and birches the essences that soon cover them with refreshing green, and earth suddenly teems with leafing and flying life, with odor of buds and laughing variety of shade and sun. I, as is my nature, was deeply under the spell. "Rossignolet du bois joli, Emporte-moi-t-une lettre!" Alexandra was coming home! St. Helen's Island, named affectionately by Champlain after his fair young wife, Helene, stretches its half-mile of park along the middle of the River opposite the city of Montreal. It is at all times a graceful sight; in summer by the refreshing shade of its deep groves beheld from the dusty city; in winter by the contrast of its flowing purple crest of trees with the flat white expanse of ice-covered river. The lower end, towards which the outlines of its double hill tend, is varied by the walls and flagstaffs of a military establishment, comprising some grey barracks, a row of officers' quarters, and a block-house, higher on the hill. In former times, when British redcoats were stationed here, and military society made the dashing feature in fashionable life, when gay and high-born parties scattered their laughter through the trim groves, improved and kept in shape by labor of the rank and file, and "the Fusileers and the Grenadiers" marched in or out with band and famous colors flying, and the regimental goat or dog, and shooting practice, officers' cricket and football matches, and mess dinners, kept the island lively and picturesque, St. Helen's was a theatre of unceasing charm to the citizens.