The All-wise Mother works very much in human life as she does in nature—topping off a hope here, and a hope there; ploughing, pruning, harrowing the soil and branches of the mind and spirit, that they may bring forth rich fruit in due season. The life that she passes by unheeded, leaving it only to the sunshine and wind and rain, often grows little else but rank vegetation, and develops rust and mould—never the crops that are life-giving and life-sustaining to the world; never the great thoughts, great deeds, wide sympathies, that raise mankind to the skies. But for Dudley the harrowing was not yet finished. Perhaps, indeed, no moment of all had been quite so bitter as the sense of his utter unworthiness and utter incapability to help Ethel in her hour of direst need. The mere thought unnerved him for the little he might have done. He was so imbued with the idea of his helplessness, that he could only stammer a few broken sentences she seemed scarcely capable of hearing. He had but one consolation. Towards the end, the sick man, suddenly opening his eyes, looked round for his sister, and seeing she was absent, had regarded Dudley with his whole face full of a question. Dudley leant down to him. “Yes, old chap,” he asked tenderly. “What is it?” “Ethel… chum… you will try and help her?” Then Dudley, with his new understanding, had grasped all that the dying man hoped. “I love her,” he said very simply. “I have been a blind fool, but I am awake now. I shall give my life to trying to win her.” “Oh! thank God… thank God,” Basil whispered. “It is certain to come right some day—don’t lose heart. You have made me very happy.” He sank into stupor after that, and spoke no more, except for a whispered “Chum”, just before he died. Then it was that the full flood of Dudley’s bitterness seemed to close in upon him, for his tortured mind translated Ethel’s stunned grief into veiled antipathy to his presence; and when there was nothing left for him to see to, he went home for Hal. In his chair, with his head bowed on his hands, Hal thought he had aged years in the last three months. “What shall I do?” she asked. “Shall I go to Ethel?” “Yes—will you? She doesn’t want me. I feel as if she hated my being there now. But if you would go—?” “It is your imagination, Dudley. Things have all got a little topsy-turvy since Doris went, but presently you will see you were mistaken. Don’t lose heart too quickly.” But he refused to be comforted, and merely shook his head in silent desolation. “You’ll stay with her if she wants you?” he asked. “Yes, I’ll stay”; and she went away to get her hat. As she mounted the stairs in Holloway, the door of Flat G opened as if some one within had been listening for her, and a stealthy head peeped out. Then a hand beckoned. Hal crossed the landing and went inside the door. The poor music-teacher’s face was swollen almost past recognition with crying.