d, his fingers on the
dying man's pulse. On the other side stood Derrick, a degree paler and
graver than usual, but revealing little of his real feelings.

"Word it as briefly as you can," said the doctor.

And the lawyer scribbled away as though for his life, while the rest
of us waited in a wretched hushed state of tension. In the room itself
there was no sound save the scratching of the pen and the laboured
breathing of the old man; but in the next house we could hear someone
playing a waltz. Somehow it did not seem to me incongruous, for it was
'Sweethearts,' and that had been the favourite waltz of Ben Rhydding,
so that I always connected it with Derrick and his trouble, and now the
words rang in my ears:

"Oh, love for a year, a week, a day,
But alas! for the love that loves alway."

If it had not been for the Major's return from India, I firmly believed
that Derrick and Freda would by this time have been betrothed. Derrick
had taken a line which necessarily divided them, had done what he saw to
be his duty; yet what were the results? He had lost Freda, he had lost
his book, he had damaged his chance of success as a writer, he had been
struck out of his father's will, and he had suffered unspeakably. Had
anything whatever been gained? The Major was dying unrepentant to all
appearance, as hard and cynical an old worldling as I ever saw. The only
spark of grace he showed was that tardy endeavour to make a fresh will.
What good had it all been? What good?

I could not answer the question then, could only cry out in a sort of
indignation, "What profit is there in his blood?" But looking at it
now, I have a sort of perception that the very lack of apparent
profitableness was part of Derrick's training, while if, as I now
incline to think, there is a hereafter where the training begun here is
continued, the old Major in the hell he most richly deserved would have
the remembrance of his son's patience and constancy and devotion to
serve as a guiding light in the outer darkness.

The lawyer no longer wrote at railroad speed; he pushed back his chair,
brought the will to the bed, and placed the pen in the trembling yellow
hand of the invalid.

"You must sign your name here," he said, pointing with his finger; and
the Major raised himself a little, and brought the pen quaveringly
down towards the paper. With a sort of fascination I watched the
finely-pointed steel nib; it trembled for an instant or two, t