“I will take her there myself,” answered Graham.  “Would you like to send any message to your sister?”

“I will write,” said M. Linders, “or rather you shall write for me; but presently—­I cannot talk any more now—­it must do presently.”

Indeed he was faint from exhaustion, and Graham could only do all that was possible to revive him, and then remain by his side till he should have recovered his strength a little; and as he sat there, silently watching, I daresay he preached a little sermon to himself, but in no unfriendly spirit to his patient, we may be sure.  This, then, was what life might come to—­this might be the end of all its glorious possibilities, of all its boundless hopes and aims.  To this man, as to another, had the great problem been presented, and he had solved it—­ thus; and to Graham, in the fulness of his youth, and strength, and energy, the solution seemed stranger than the problem.  To most of us, perhaps, as years go on, life comes to be represented by its failures rather than its successes, by its regrets rather than its hopes; enthusiasms die out, illusions vanish, belief in the perfectibility of ourselves and of others fades, as we learn to realize the shortness of life, the waywardness of human nature, the baffling power of circumstances, too easily allowed; but in their place, a humble faith in a more perfect and satisfying hereafter, which shall be the complement of our existence here, the fulfilment of our unfinished efforts, our many shortcomings, springs up, let us trust, to encourage us to new strivings, to ever-fresh beginnings, which shall perhaps be completed and bear fruit in another world; perhaps be left on earth to work into the grand economy of progress—­not wholly useless in any case.  But at four or five and twenty, in spite of some failures and disappointments, the treasure of existence to an honest, frank heart, still seems inexhaustible as it is inestimable.  The contrast between the future Graham looked forward to, full of hopes and ambitions, and this past whose history he could guess at, and whose results he contemplated, forced itself upon him, and an immense compassion filled the young man’s heart at the sight of this wasted life, of this wayward mind, lighted up with the sudden, passionate gleams of tenderness for his child, the one pure affection perhaps that survived to witness to what had been—­a great compassion, an honest, wondering pity for this man who had thus recklessly squandered his share of the common birth right.  Ah! which of us, standing on safe shores, and seeing, as all must see at times, the sad wreck of some shattered life cast up by the troubled waves at our feet, does not ask himself, in no supercilious spirit, surely, but with an awe-struck humility, “Who or what hath made thee to differ?”