r services to humanity have been."

"Still you will find yourself outside the walls of your Church, Mr.
Holland. And you will probably adopt the course which other sons of
the Church have thought necessary to pursue when the stubborn old thing
refused to be reformed."

"If you suggest that I shall become a Dissenter, Mr. Linton--"

"I suggest nothing of the sort, though you dissent already from a good
many of the fundamental practices of the Church, if I may be permitted
the expression. Now, I should like to make a provision for your future,
Mr. Holland."

"My dear sir, such a proposition seems to me to be a most extraordinary
one. I hope you will not think me rude in saying so much. I have not
suggested, Mr. Linton, as other clergymen might, that you mean an
affront to me, but I don't think that anything would be gained by
prolonging--"

"Permit me to continue, and perhaps you may get a glimmer of gain. Mr.
Holland, I am what people usually term a doomed man. So far as I can
gather I have only about six months longer to live."

"Merciful Heaven!"

"Perhaps it is merciful on the part of Heaven to destroy a man when he
has reached the age of forty. We'll not go into that question just now.
I was warned by a doctor two years ago that I had not long to live. It
appears that my heart was never really a heart--that is to say, it may
have had its affections, its emotions, its passions, but pneumatically
it is a failure; it was never a blood-pump. Six months ago I was
examined by the greatest authority in Europe, and he pronounced my doom.
Three days ago I went to the leading specialist in London, and he told
me I might with care live six months longer."

"My dear Mr. Linton, with what words can I express to you my deep
feeling for you?"

George Holland spoke after a prolonged pause, during which he stared at
the white-faced man before him. A smile was upon that white face.
George was deeply affected. He seemed to have stepped out of a world
of visions--a world that had a visionary Church, visionary preachers,
visionary doctrines--all unsubstantial as words, which are but
breath--into a world of realities--such realities as life and death
and----Ah, there were no other realities in existence but the two: life
and death.

And Mr. Linton continued smiling.

"You may gather that I wrote to you in order that you may help me to
make my soul. What a capital phrase! I didn't do that, Mr. Holland. I
have never been sang