es who fail in life
because they have no sense of proportion, because they can not
comprehend the complex issues among which they have to fight.

"And now I am laid aside, a useless weapon; I am not even physically
capable of writing, even if the world would hear me; and I am forced
back upon myself, upon a feeble life, necessarily self-centered, to
nurse and coddle myself as though I was a poor failing dotard, with
one avenue alone--and how precarious!--through which I may perhaps
speak my little message to the world--the education of a child to
carry on my torch.

"I have written to you my whole mind, not because I want you to
reassure me--no, that is impossible; but because I am weak and
miserable. I must unburden myself to some one--must confess that I
have indeed broken down.

"And, further, what is the Death, into whose antechamber I have
already passed? Is it indeed true that, as I have so passionately
denied, I have fallen into the grasp of a power which is waging an
equal war with truth and light and goodness? Shall I be sacrificed to
the struggle, without having made the world a whit better, or richer,
or stronger, with the only memory of me a quiet life with few follies
and fewer deeds of power, to be laid away in the dark?

"And yet I have a lingering hope that this is a leading too; that I
shall somehow emerge. My dear Chris, come and see me again as soon as
you can. You will be even more welcome if you bring my boy, Edward
Bruce, as I understand we are to call him--_attamen ipse veni_.

"I am your affectionate friend,
"Arthur Hamilton.

"Flora"--his collie, of whom he was very fond--"is sitting watching
me with such liquid eyes that I must go and take her out. We have not
walked as far as the creek yet; the first effect of valetudinarian
habits is, I find, to make one feel really ill."

On the 4th of August, Tuesday, at 11.15, a card was brought to me,
and immediately afterward a tall gentleman appeared, with a boy of
about fourteen, whom I knew at once to be Edward Bruce.

The gentleman, after a few polite words of inquiry after Arthur,
retired, the boy saying good-bye to him affectionately. He left me
his address for a few days, in case I should wish to see him.

Edward Bruce was a boy of extraordinary beauty--there was no denying
that. Personal descriptions are always disappointing; but, not to be
prolix, he had such eyes, with so much passion and fire in them, that
they