“After all I am much the most to be pitied,” he began.  “I thought to-day, Governor —­ I did not know what would become of me!”

“I can tell you that beforehand,” said his brother.  “You will become, exactly, what you choose to make yourself.”

“That is what you always say,” returned Rufus a little cynically.

“That is what I have found in my own practice,” said Winthrop.  He put up the tongs and took his old seat by Winnie.  Rufus looked still into the fire.

“I am thrown out of this employment now,” he said; —­ “I am disgusted with it —­ and if I were not, there is no way for me to follow it with advantage.”

“I am not sorry for that, Will.  I never liked it for you, nor you for it.”

“I have nothing to do. —­ I am a loose pin in the Mosaic of society —­ the pattern is all made up without me.”

“What pin has got your place?” said Winthrop.

“What do you mean?”

“Simply, that as in the nature of things there cannot be too many pins, a pin that is out of place must be such by a derelict of duty.”

“What is my place?”

“If my word would set you in it, I would tell you.”

“Tell me, and perhaps it will.”

“I should bid you return to your engineer’s work and serve God in it.”

“Very poor chance for serving God or man, in that work,” said Rufus.  “Or myself.”

“And no chance at all so long as you are doing nothing.”

“I cannot bear to compare myself with you,” —­ Rufus went on moodily.

“Compare yourself with yourself, Will, —­ the actual with the possible, —­ and then go forward.”

“What is possible in an engineer’s life!” said Rufus.

“Everything is possible, in any place where Providence has put you, for the future at least.  And the firm purpose of serving God in it, will dignify for the present any life.

“’A man that looks on glass
“’On it may stay his eye;
“’Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass,
“‘And then the heaven espy!’”

Rufus met the grave slight smile on his brother’s face, and his eye watered.

“You are better than I am,” he said with one of very different meaning.

“If that be true to-day, Will, don’t let it be true to-morrow.”

They wrung each other’s hands, and the elder brother went soberly away.

CHAPTER II.

An’t be any way, it must be with valour; for Policy I hate:  I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician.  TWELFTH NIGHT.

The family at No. 11 on the Parade, were seated at breakfast one morning towards the latter end of May; the old trio, only with Elizabeth and Rose in each other’s places.

“What is the reason Winthrop Landholm don’t come here any more?” said the latter lady.

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Haye, when the silence had threatened the failure of any answer at all.