Ten millions ... ten millions of his own.  But if John Lavington was ruined? ...  Faxon stood up with a cry.  That was it, then—­that was what the warning meant!  And if he had not fled from it, dashed wildly away from it into the night, he might have broken the spell of iniquity, the powers of darkness might not have prevailed!  He caught up the pile of newspapers and began to glance through each in turn for the headline:  “Wills Admitted to Probate”.  In the last of all he found the paragraph he sought, and it stared up at him as if with Rainer’s dying eyes.

That—­that was what he had done!  The powers of pity had singled him out to warn and save, and he had closed his ears to their call, had washed his hands of it, and fled.  Washed his hands of it!  That was the word.  It caught him back to the dreadful moment in the lodge when, raising himself up from Rainer’s side, he had looked at his hands and seen that they were red. ...

A MESSENGER

BY

MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS

The Berserker of the North, because he believed in the directing power of the gods, knew no fear.  Death or life—­it was meted out by a destiny that could not err.  In song and story he has been one of the most attractive figures of the past; far more attractive in his savage virtues than the more sensuous heroes of Greece and Rome.  In this story he lives again in the American boy who has his ancestor’s inexplicable uplift of spirit in the presence of danger and his implicit faith in “the God of battles and the beauty of holiness.”  The ideal of Miles Morgan is such a man as Chinese Gordon, who, not only in youth but all through life, had eyes for “the vision splendid.”

The ethical value of “A Messenger” may be summed up in the words of the General:  “There is nothing in Americanism to prevent either inspiration or heroism.”

A MESSENGER

[Footnote:  From “The Militants,” by Mary R. S. Andrews.  Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.]

    How oft do they their silver bowers leave,
    To come to succour us that succour want! 
    How oft do they with golden pineons cleave
    The flitting skyes, like flying Pursuivant,
    Against fowle feendes to ayd us militant! 
    They for us fight, they watch and dewly ward,
    And their bright Squadrons round about us plant;
    And all for love, and nothing for reward. 
    O!  Why should heavenly God to men have such regard?

          —­Spenser’s “Faerie Queene.”

That the other world of our hope rests on no distant, shining star, but lies about us as an atmosphere, unseen yet near, is the belief of many.  The veil of material life shades earthly eyes, they say, from the glories in which we ever are.  But sometimes when the veil wears thin in mortal stress, or is caught away by a rushing, mighty wind of inspiration, the trembling human soul, so bared, so purified, may look down unimagined heavenly vistas, and messengers may steal across the shifting boundary, breathing hope and the air of a brighter world.  And of him who speaks his vision, men say “He is mad,” or “He has dreamed.”