"Yes," Piers said, sighing; "the strong are taken and the weakly ones left. Harry is, I suppose, half way round the world again in the 'Persis.' There is Ralph working hard and enduring a good deal at the old home, while I----" "You are not unhappy, dear?" Joyce asked, anxiously. "No," he said; but the "No" was not heartily said. "After all, we think too much of ourselves and all our little concerns. Why, Joyce, what are we and this earth we live in, when compared to that great universe of which these stars, as they come out one by one, seem to bring a nightly message? What are we, to think so much of ourselves? and what are life, and death, and troubles, and joys, and petty disappointments? They are nothing--lighter than dust in the balance." "They are something to God," Joyce said, reverently. "He has told us so. Dearest Piers, you are not losing that Faith which we used to call our staff in the dear old days." Piers was silent for a moment. "Joyce," he said, at last, "I like to talk to you sometimes. I sit and read in my den, and go out and in of the sitting room and see how mother is getting on, and my brain gets full of cobwebs and I am impatient, and long to spring up into a better and nobler life, and yet I am tied down. Don't you think I did not feel my miserable weakness when I heard of Gilbert, in the thick of the rioters, saving a woman and child, and bravely doing his best in the face of the weakness and incompetence of those about him? I felt as if I would have given something to get a hard thump on my head in such a cause, the cause of humanity." "Piers, you are dull at home, I know, but you have the delightful young doctor for a friend." "Yes; but I can't sham illness to get him to come; he is a long way off. But I am doing some more diagrams for his lecture on Fungi." "I am so glad; and Piers, when Gilbert can really afford it, we are going to have a house in the country, and call it 'The Haven,' and you and mother shall come and live with us, and you shall help me to teach Falcon, and we shall be so happy." "Ah! that is looking a long way forward, Joyce. Perhaps my haven will be here, under the shadow of this old church, before then. But I feel the better already for being with you, old Joyce; you are just the same as you ever were." The brother and sister exchanged a kiss, and then, in the silence of perfect sympathy and affection, walked back to the house. * * * * *