the court--into the blue sky, I think. I picked up one of
his thin hands and said to him: "Little Jack, your father has gone away
from us and is at rest. There is a beautiful lady in the South who loves
you as she loves me; will not her love make you happy?" He did not appear
to understand me, but shrank into himself as if afraid. Indeed, sweet
benefactress, I shall send him into the country somewhere as you bid me,
and I shall see that your love brings him greater happiness than it has
brought me, for with him you shall not withdraw with one hand what you
have held out in the other.

I went away, leaving an old woman to care for the dead man and his child.
It will be long before I forget how alien and far-away the noises of the
street sounded as I passed out of that chamber of silence. Is it not a
strange thing that death should have this power of benediction? Of a
sudden a breath comes out of the heavens, our little cares are touched by
an eternal presence, a rift is blown in the thick mists that hem us about,
and behold, we look out into infinite visionless space. And now I am back
in my office. I open O'Meara's worn and much-stained _Virgil_, and inside
the cover I find these words scribbled in pencil: "_I have cried unto God
and He hath not heard my cry; but thou, O beloved poet, art ever near with
consolation_!" I do not know whether the sentence is original with O'Meara
or a quotation; it is certainly new to me. One other book I brought with
me, and the two were the whole worldly possession of the dead man. This is
a small but pretty thick blank-book, written over almost to the last page.
I have not examined the contents carefully, but I can see that they are
made up of miscellaneous passages copied from books and of reflections on
a great variety of topics, with few or no records of events. One of the
last entries is from Clarence Mangan's heart-breaking poem, _The Nameless
One_:

And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow,
And want, and sickness, and houseless nights,
He bides in calmness the silent morrow
That no ray lights.

Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble,
Deep in your bosoms: there let him dwell!
He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble
Here, and in hell.

And is it not a touch of Fate's irony that I should be sending this
threnody of death to one who might expect to receive from me only messag