everywhere for a month or so:—­the girl could not know her own mind, for she suited him exactly! and he requested the world to partake of his astonishment.  Chronicles of the season in London informed him that he was not the only fellow to whom the gates were shut.  She could hardly be thinking of Nevil?  However, let the epistle be read.  ‘Now for the Shrapnel shot,’ he nodded finally to Colonel Halkett, expanded his bosom, or natural cuirass, as before-mentioned, and was vocable above the common pitch:—­

’"My brave Beauchamp,—­On with your mission, and never a summing of results in hand, nor thirst for prospects, nor counting upon harvests; for seed sown in faith day by day is the nightly harvest of the soul, and with the soul we work.  With the soul we see."’

Captain Baskelett intervened:  ’Ahem!  I beg to observe that this delectable rubbish is underlined by old Nevil’s pencil.’  He promised to do a little roaring whenever it occurred, and continued with ghastly false accentuation, an intermittent sprightliness and depression of tone in the wrong places.

’"The soul,” et caetera.  Here we are!

     “Desires to realize our gains are akin to the passion of usury;
     these are tricks of the usurer to grasp his gold in act and
     imagination.  Have none of them.  Work at the people!”

—­At them, remark!—­

“Moveless do they seem to you?  Why, so is the earth to the sowing husbandman, and though we cannot forecast a reaping season, we have in history durable testification that our seasons come in the souls of men, yea, as a planet that we have set in motion, and faster and faster are we spinning it, and firmer and firmer shall we set it to regularity of revolution.  That means life!”

—­Shrapnel roars:  you will have Nevil in a minute.

“Recognize that now we have bare life; at best for the bulk of men the Saurian lizard’s broad back soaking and roasting in primeval slime; or say, in the so-called teachers of men, as much of life as pricks the frog in March to stir and yawn, and up on a flaccid leap that rolls him over some three inches nearer to the ditchwater besought by his instinct.”

‘I ask you, did you ever hear?  The flaccid frog!  But on we go.’

’"Professors, prophets, masters, each hitherto has had his creed and system to offer, good mayhap for the term; and each has put it forth for the truth everlasting, to drive the dagger to the heart of time, and put the axe to human growth!—­that one circle of wisdom issuing of the experience and needs of their day, should act the despot over all other circles for ever!—­so where at first light shone to light the yawning frog to his wet ditch, there, with the necessitated revolution of men’s minds in the course of ages, darkness radiates.”

’That’s old Nevil.  Upon my honour, I haven’t a notion of what it all means, and I don’t believe the old rascal Shrapnel has himself.  And pray be patient, my dear colonel.  You will find him practical presently.  I’ll skip, if you tell me to.  Darkness radiates, does it!