There are worse evils than death.  This I have always heard, but now I know it.  God was merciful when He slew my babes, and I, presumptous in my rebellion, and the efforts with which I tried to prevent His work.  Frederick, you are weak, dissipated, and without conscience.  The darling babe, the beautiful child, has grown into a reckless youth whose impulses Mr. Sutherland will find it hard to restrain, and over whom his mother—­do I call her your mother?—­has little influence, though she tries hard to do a mother’s part and save herself and myself from boundless regret.  My boy, my boy, do you feel the lack of your own mother’s vigour?  Might you have lived under my care and owned a better restraint and learned to work and live a respectable life in circumstances less provocative of self-indulgence?  Such questions, when they rise, are maddening.  When I see them form themselves in Philemon’s eyes I drive them out with all the force of my influence, which is still strong over him.  But when they make way in my own breast, I can find no relief, not even in prayer.  Frederick, were I to tell you the truth about your parentage, would the shock of such an unexpected revelation make a man of you?  I have been tempted to make the trial, at times.  Deep down in my heart I have thought that perhaps I should best serve the good man who is growing grey under your waywardness, by opening up before you the past and present agonies of which you are the unconscious centre.  But I cannot do this while she lives.  The look she gave me one day when I approached you a step too near at the church door, proves that it would be the killing of her to reveal her long-preserved secret now.  I must wait her death, which seems near, and then—­

No, I cannot do it.  Mr. Sutherland has but one staff to lean on, and that is you.  It may be a poor one, a breaking one, but it is still a staff.  I dare not take it away—­I dare not.  Ah, if Philemon was the man he was once, he might counsel me, but he is only a child now; just as if God had heard my cry for children and had given me—­him.

More money, and still more money! and I hate it except for what it will do for the poor and incapable about me.  How strange are the ways of Providence!  To us who have no need of aught beyond a competence, money pours in almost against our will, while to those who long and labour for it, it comes not, or comes so slowly the life wears out in the waiting and the working.  The Zabels, now!  Once well-to-do ship-builders, with a good business and a home full of curious works of art, they now appear to find it hard to obtain even the necessities of life.  Such are the freaks of fortune; or should I say, the dealings of an inscrutable Providence?  Once I tried to give something out of my abundance to these old friends, but their pride stood in the way and the attempt failed.  Worse than that.  As if to show that benefits should proceed from them to me