the fireless hearth, and took up its position on the far side of the bed opposite to him. Though by no means addicted to nervous alarms, Laurence felt a chill run through him, right up to the roots of his hair. Was it conceivable that he beheld the Umbra or Corporeal Soul, of which Ovid speaks, and that this phantom would keep watch with him over its own unburied corpse during the coming hours? His sweet fairy-lady was one thing, and this quite another, in the line of disembodied spirits. Stoke Rivers, apparently, was not a comfortable place to die in. Laurence registered a hasty vow that he, for one, would take precious good care to arrange to die somewhere else! But as he gazed, somewhat fearfully, at the intruder, it declared itself pathetically and pitifully human—nothing more recondite, indeed, than Lowndes, the wiry, long-armed, grey-faced valet.

"I thought it proper to wait till you should come, sir," he said, under his breath. "Though Mr. Rivers has no need of my services now, I have attended on him too constantly to feel it fitting I should be out of call."—His voice quavered, and he cleared his throat.—"He was a gentleman that rarely praised, sir. Some might have thought him harsh; but that was because his mind was so engaged with study. In all the forty years I waited on him, he never gave me an uncivil word; and it is not many gentlemen of whom you can say that."

He lent across, carefully removed some sprigs of box lying high on the sheet, then folded it down quickly and skilfully across the chest. Laurence was aware of a jealous devotion in his attitude. No hands save his own should again touch his dead master. But the sheet once arranged to his satisfaction, he stepped back, a pace or two, into the shadow of the damask curtains.

Then the young man looked long and silently upon the dead. Notwithstanding its extreme emaciation, the face was gentler than in life. This was not merely owing to the closing of the brilliant eyes. An immense calm rested on it. The hunger of the intellect was stayed at last; and the face was majestic in its composure—the face of one who has passed, for ever, beyond the tyranny of desire. Looking on it, Laurence bowed himself reverently in spirit, while the conviction rooted itself in him, that of all virtues the most fertile, the most admirable, is courage. For the weak, the dismayed, for skulkers, liars, and dastards, in whatever department of action or of thought, there is small hope—so he told himself—either here or hereafter. The battle is to the strong; and, therefore, to be strong is the one and only thing which really signifies.

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