than ever as a boy to be shielded from the shock of
further disillusion with regard to himself. He had not had Alec's weal a
thorn in his conscience for ten months without coming to feel that, if
merely for the sake of his own comfort, he would not shoulder that
burden again. Now this conception he had of Alec as a weaker man, and of
his ideals as crude and yet needing tender dealing, was possibly a
mistaken one, yet, so curious is our life that, true or false, it was
the thing that at this juncture made him spurn all thought of setting
aside the reproach of his roused sense of loss as morbid or unreal. He
looked to his early realisation of the all-attractiveness of the love of
God, not with the rational view that such phase of religion is ordained
to fade in the heat of life, but with passionate regret that by his own
fault he had turned away from the glory of life. He thought of the
foolish dreamer who had been struck dead in the full impulse of
adoration and longing love, and he would have given reason and life
itself to have such gate of death open now for him.

His spirit did not rest, but tossed constantly, as a fever patient upon
his bed, for rest requires more than the softest of beds; and as even
those whose bodies are stretched on pillows of down may be too weak to
find bodily rest, so the soul that lies, as do all self-sick souls, in
the everlasting arms, too often lacks health to feel the up-bearing.

A clever sailor, whose ship is sinking because of too much freight does
not think long before he throws the treasure overboard; a wise man in
pain makes quick vows of abstinence from the cause of pain. In Trenholme
there was little vestige of that low type of will which we see in
lobsters and in many wilful men, who go on clutching whatever they have
clutched, whether it be useful or useless, till the claw is cut off. He
had not realised that he had fallen from the height of his endeavours
before he began to look about eagerly for something that he might
sacrifice. But here he was met by the difficulty that proves that in the
higher stages of human development honest effort after righteousness is
not one whit easier than are man's first simple efforts to put down the
brute in him. Trenholme could find in himself no offending member that
was not so full of good works toward others that he could hardly destroy
it without defrauding them. He had sought nothing for himself that was
not a legitimate object of desire