hrough the fight with splendor, only they're
every one two-edged, and you have to be careful with swords that cut
both ways. His father was an inventor genius and there are bales of
money and already it has begun to press down on him a little. Still,
that may be the exact right thing. He has talked about it once or
twice as a nice boy would. There's a place on the other side which
comes to him, with factories and such things. He wanted to know
wouldn't it be his business to see that the working people were
properly looked after; I gathered he's been reading books, trying to
find out. And then he got suddenly shy and very bright red as to the
face, and cleared out. So far, so good, but it isn't far enough. Not
yet.

That's my present job. You'll get yours.

Wasn't it wonderful--I mean Halarkenden! When I think of him and then
of myself it gives me a good deal of a jounce. It surprises me that I
ever had the conceit to think I could handle this parson proposition.
Lately I've not been over-cheerful about it. That's one reason why
your letter did me good.

I hear the Gift of God coming up the stairs, and I've neglected to look
up the Future Periphrastic Conjugation and that ticklish difference
between the Gerund and the Gerundive, which is vital.

One thing more--your second postscript. You didn't suppose that I
don't, did you? Only, not like me!

GEOFFREY McBIRNEY.

The man took the letter down the three flights to the post-box at the
entrance of the Parish House and dropped it, with a certain
deliberation, as if he were speaking to someone whom he cared for, with
a certain hesitation, as if he were not sure that he had spoken well,
into the box. As he mounted the stairs again his springing gait was
slower than usual. It was very late, but he drew a long chair close
and poked the hard-coal fire till it glowed to him like a bed of
jewels, all alive and stirred to their hot hearts; opals and topazes
and rubies and cairngorms and the souls of blue sapphires and purple
amethysts playing ghostly over the rest. He dropped into the chair and
the tall, black-clothed figure fell into lax lines; his long fingers,
the fingers of an artist, a musician, lay on the arms of the chair
limply as if disconnected from any central power; there was surely
despair, hopelessness, in the man's attitude. His gray eyes glowed
from under the straight black brows with much of the hidden flame, the
smouldering intensity of