Whatever were Louis’s private opinions about Franz’s theology it was impossible to dissent at that hour, and he took his friend’s last instructions and farewell with such gentle, solemn feelings as had long been strange to his-heart.

In the afternoon Franz was driven out to Christine’s.  It was the last physical effort he was capable of.  No one saw the parting of those two souls.  He went with Christine’s arms around him, and her lips whispering tender, hopeful farewells.  It was noticed however, that after Franz’s death a strange change came over Christine—­a beautiful nobility and calmness of character, and a gentle setting of her life to the loftiest aims.

Louis said she had been wonderfully moved by the papers Franz left.  The ten letters she had written during the spring-time of their love went to the grave with him, but the rest were of such an extraordinary nature that Louis could not refrain from showing them to his cousin, and then at her request leaving them for her to dispose of.  They were indeed letters written to herself under every circumstance of her life, and directed to every place in which she had sojourned.  In all of them she was addressed as “Beloved Wife of my Soul,” and in this way the poor fellow had consoled his breaking, longing heart.

To some of them he had written imaginary answers, but as these all referred to a financial secret known only to the parties concerned in Christine’s and his own sacrifice, it was proof positive that he had written only for his own comfort.  But it was perhaps well they fell into Christine’s hands:  she could not but be a better woman for reading the simple records of a strife which set perfect unselfishness and child-like submission as the goal of its duties.

Seven years after Franz’s death Christine and her daughter died together of the Roman fever, and James Barker Clarke, junior, was left sole inheritor of Franz’s wealth.

“A German dreamer!”

Ah, well, there are dreamers and dreamers.  And perchance he that seeks fame, and he that seeks gold, and he that seeks power, may all alike, when this shadowy existence is over, look back upon life “as a dream when one awaketh.”

THE VOICE AT MIDNIGHT.

“It is the King’s highway that we are in; and know this, His messengers are on it.  They who have ears to hear will hear; and He opens the eyes of some, and they see things not to be lightly spoken of.”

It was John Balmuto who said these words to me.  John was a Shetlander, and for forty years he had gone to the Arctic seas with the whale boats.  Then there had come to him a wonderful experience.  He had been four days and nights alone with God upon the sea, among mountains of ice reeling together in perilous madness, and with little light but the angry flush of the aurora.  Then, undoubtedly, was born that strong faith in the Unseen which made him an active character in the facts I am going to relate.