"Thank you--there is nothing more to do--but you can see him!" The voice that uttered those hopeless words was husky with suppressed tears, and yet, as he opened a door at his right, motioned Theodore forward, and abruptly left the room, the sad and solemn truth had not so much as glimmered on the young man's mind. Not until he had fairly entered and nearly crossed the back parlor, were his feet arrested by the presence of death. Even then he could not believe it possible that God had called for the soul, and it had gone. He stood still and looked on the straight motionless figure, covered with its drapery of white. He advanced and looked reverently upon the face that only yesterday he had seen bubbling with life and fun. The icy seal was surely there, the features had felt that solemn, mysterious touch, and grown sharper and more clearly defined under it. Nothing in his life had ever come to Theodore with such sudden and fearful surprise. Pliny, then, was the one still hovering this side, and the other gone. What an awful death! "Murdered," he said, with set lips and rigid face. "Just murdered! That is the proper term. Why could they not be hung like other murderers? Was it because their crime was committed by degrees, instead of at one fatal blow?" He could not trust himself to stand looking on that still face, and pursue these thoughts further. He turned quickly away, and mechanically opened the family Bible, in hope of something to steady his fierce, almost frightful, thoughts. He opened to the family record--saw the familiar name Benjamin Phillips--born Nov. 17th, 18--. The date was familiar too--the date of his own birthday--year, month, even day. How strange the coincidence! Pliny's birthday too--he had long known that; now here were the trio. Three young men launched upon life in the same day of time! How _very_ different must have been the circumstances of each! He glanced about the pleasant room; he could imagine with what lavish love and tender care this young man's early years had been surrounded--he knew something of the high hopes which had centered in him. He knew all about the elegance and grandeur of Pliny's home--he had vivid memories of the horrors of his own. Now here they were, Pliny struggling wildly with his disordered brain--this one--where? Who had made them to differ? Was this the repeatal of the old, old sentence: "The iniquities of the fathers shall be visited upon the children?" But then what a father had _his_ been to him, and yet how full of signal blessing and wonderful success had his life been! Then sounding sweetly through his brain came the sentence: "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." Had the gracious Lord, then, come to him, and thrice filled what a father's place should have been? And was he but showing these fathers, who had dared to take the responsibility upon themselves, and while they fed and petted and loved the poor bodies, starved and seared the souls, what