tarrise a wind came
moaning out of the west to blow the gate ajar, and then the soul I
loved fled like a flame across the Seas, and in its seat sat Death.

I wonder where he is to-day? I wonder if in that dim world beyond, as
he came gliding in, there rose on some wan throne a King,--a dark and
pierced Jew, who knows the writhings of the earthly damned, saying, as
he laid those heart-wrung talents down, "Well done!" while round about
the morning stars sat singing.

XIII

Of the Coming of John

What bring they 'neath the midnight,
Beside the River-sea?
They bring the human heart wherein
No nightly calm can be;
That droppeth never with the wind,
Nor drieth with the dew;
O calm it, God; thy calm is broad
To cover spirits too.

The river floweth on.

MRS. BROWNING.

Carlisle Street runs westward from the centre of Johnstown, across a
great black bridge, down a hill and up again, by little shops and
meat-markets, past single-storied homes, until suddenly it stops
against a wide green lawn. It is a broad, restful place, with two
large buildings outlined against the west. When at evening the winds
come swelling from the east, and the great pall of the city's smoke
hangs wearily above the valley, then the red west glows like a
dreamland down Carlisle Street, and, at the tolling of the supper-bell,
throws the passing forms of students in dark silhouette against the
sky. Tall and black, they move slowly by, and seem in the sinister
light to flit before the city like dim warning ghosts. Perhaps they
are; for this is Wells Institute, and these black students have few
dealings with the white city below.

And if you will notice, night after night, there is one dark form that
ever hurries last and late toward the twinkling lights of Swain
Hall,--for Jones is never on time. A long, straggling fellow he is,
brown and hard-haired, who seems to be growing straight out of his
clothes, and walks with a half-apologetic roll. He used perpetually to
set the quiet dining-room into waves of merriment, as he stole to his
place after the bell had tapped for prayers; he seemed so perfectly
awkward. And yet one glance at his face made one forgive him
much,--that broad, good-natured smile in which lay no bit of art or
artifice, but seemed just bubbling good-nature and genuine satisfaction
with the world.

He came to us from Altamaha, away down there beneath the gnarled oaks
of Southeastern