. With the toe of his boot he dispersed their scorched and
crumbling wafer. Stamp them in! Stamp in that man's life! Burnt! No
more doubts, no more of this gnawing fear! Burnt? A man--an
innocent-sewer rat! Recoiling from the fire he grasped his forehead. It
was burning hot and seemed to be going round.

Well, it was done! Only fools without will or purpose regretted. And
suddenly he laughed. So Larry had died for nothing! He had no will, no
purpose, and was dead! He and that girl might now have been living,
loving each other in the warm night, away at the other end of the world,
instead of lying dead in the cold night here! Fools and weaklings
regretted, suffered from conscience and remorse. A man trod firmly, held
to his purpose, no matter what!

He went to the window and drew back the curtain. What was that? A
gibbet in the air, a body hanging? Ah! Only the trees--the dark
trees--the winter skeleton trees! Recoiling, he returned to his armchair
and sat down before the fire. It had been shining like that, the lamp
turned low, his chair drawn up, when Larry came in that afternoon two
months ago. Bah! He had never come at all! It was a nightmare. He had
been asleep. How his head burned! And leaping up, he looked at the
calendar on his bureau. "January the 28th!" No dream! His face
hardened and darkened. On! Not like Larry! On!
1914.

A STOIC

I

1

"Aequam memento rebus in arduis
Servare mentem:"--Horace.

In the City of Liverpool, on a January day of 1905, the Board-room of
"The Island Navigation Company" rested, as it were, after the labours of
the afternoon. The long table was still littered with the ink, pens,
blotting-paper, and abandoned documents of six persons--a deserted
battlefield of the brain. And, lonely, in his chairman's seat at the top
end old Sylvanus Heythorp sat, with closed eyes, still and heavy as an
image. One puffy, feeble hand, whose fingers quivered, rested on the arm
of his chair; the thick white hair on his massive head glistened in the
light from a green-shaded lamp. He was not asleep, for every now and
then his sanguine cheeks filled, and a sound, half sigh, half grunt,
escaped his thick lips between a white moustache and the tiny tuft of
white hairs above his cleft chin. Sunk in the chair, that square thick
trunk of a body in short black-braided coat seemed divested of all neck.

Young Gilbert Farney, secretary of "The