He lingered so strangely and so contentedly over these words, that I was singularly touched, and I sat down by his bedside and took his thin white hand in mine.  ‘Doctor,’ said he, presently, `you have been very good and kind to me now for more than ten months, and I have learned in that time to trust and esteem you as though I had known you for many long years.  There are no friends of mine near me in the world now, for I am a lonely old man, and before I came here I lived alone, and I have been lonely almost all my life.  But I cannot die tonight without telling you the story of my past, and of the days when I used to be young,—­very long ago now,—­that you may understand why I die here alone, a white-haired old bachelor; and that I may be comforted in my death by the knowledge that I leave at least one friend upon earth to sympathise in my sorrow and to bless me in my solitary grave.  ‘It is a long story, Doctor,’ said the little old man, ’but I feel stronger this afternoon than I have felt for weeks, and I am quite sure I can tell it all from end to end.  I have kept it many years in my heart, a secret from every human soul; but now all is over with my sorrow and with me for ever, and I care not who knows of it after I am gone.’  Then after a little pause he told me his story, while I sat beside him holding his hand in mine, and I think I did not lose a word of all he said, for he spoke very slowly and distinctly, and I listened with all my heart.  Shall I tell it to you, Lizzie?  It is not one of those stories that end happily; like the stories we read in children’s fairy books, nor is it exciting and sensational like the modern popular novels.  There are no dramatic situations in it, and no passionate scenes of tragical love or remorse; ’tis a still, neutral-colored, dreamy bit of pathos; the story of a lost life,—­ that it will make you sad perhaps to hear, and maybe, a little graver than usual.  Only that.”

“Please tell it, Dr Peyton,” I answered.  “You know I have a special liking for such sad histories.  ’Tis one of my old-maidish eccentricities I suppose; but somehow I always think sorrow more musical than mirth, and I love the quiet of shadowy places better than the brilliant glow of the open landscape.”

“You are right, Lizzie,” he returned.  “That is the feeling of the true poet in all ages, and the most poetical lives are always those in which the melancholy element predominates.  Yet it is contrast that makes the beauty of things, and doubtless we should not fully understand the sweetness of your grave harmonies, nor the loveliness of your shadowy valleys, were all music grave and all places shadowy.  And inanimate nature is most assuredly the faithful type and mirror of human life.  But I must not waste our time any longer in such idle prologues as these!  You shall hear the little old man’s story at once, while it is still fresh in my memory, though for the matter of that, I am not likely, I think, to forget it very easily.”  So Dr Peyton told it me as we sat together there in the growing darkness of the warm summer night, and this, reader mine, is the story he told.