“Don’t make light of it, Mantel!”

“I don’t mean to, but you must not overestimate the impressions made on me.  I am not so good as you think.”

“I wish you had the courage to be as good as you are.”

“But there is no use trying to be what I am not.  If I should start off with you, I should never be able to follow you.  My old self would get the victory.  In the long run, a man will be himself.  ’Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome—­seldom extinguished.’”

“What a mood you are in, Mantel!  It makes me shiver to hear you talk so.  Here I am, full of hope and purpose; my heart on fire; believing in life; confident of the outcome; and you, a better man by nature than I am, sitting here, cold as a block of ice, and the victim of despair!  I ought to be able to do something!  Sweet as life is to me to-night, I feel that I could lay it down to save you.”

“Dear fellow!” said Mantel, grasping his hands and choking with emotion; “you don’t know how that moves me!  It can’t seem half so strange to you as it does to me; but I must be true to myself.  If I told you I would take this step I should not be honest.  No!  Not to-night!  Sometime, perhaps.  I haven’t much faith in life, but I swear I don’t believe, bad man as I am, that anybody can ever go clear to the bottom, without being rescued by a love like that!  I’ll never forget it, Davy; never!  It will save me sometime; but you must not talk any more, you are tired out.  Go to bed, friend, brother, the only one I ever really had and loved.  You will need your sleep.  Leave me alone, and I will sit the night out and chew the bitter cud.”

It was not until daybreak that David ceased his supplications and lay down to snatch a moment’s rest.  When he awoke, he sprang up suddenly and saw Mantel still sitting before the open window where he left him, smoking his cigar and pondering the great problem.

“I have had a wonderful dream,” he said.

“What was it?” asked Mantel.

“I dreamt that I was swimming alone in a vast ocean,—­weary, exhausted, desperate and sinking,—­but just as I was going down a hand was thrust out of the sky, and although I could not reach it, so long as I kept my eyes on it I swam with perfect ease; while, just the moment I took them off, my old fatigue came back and I began to sink.  When I saw this, I never looked away for even a second, and the sea seemed to bear me up with giant arms.  I swam and swam as easily as men float, day after day and year after year, until I reached the harbor.”

“Whose hand was it?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Well, swim on and look up, Davy, and God bless you.”

They parted at dawn, one to break through the meshes and escape, and the other—!

In Australia, when drought drives the rabbits southward, the ranchmen, terrified at their approach, have only to erect a woven wire fence on the north side of their farms to be perfectly safe, for the poor things lie down against it and die in droves—­too stupid to go round, climb over, or dig under!  It is a comfort to see one of them now and then who has determined to find the green fields on the southward side—­no matter what it costs!