y I, meeting him foot to foot on the controversy, 'in case I
lose my son, my daughter, my wife--the wife of my soul and heart--shall
I not grieve? shall I not be permitted the solace of a tear?'

"And Epictetus: 'Were you to blame for the disease which cut them off?
Did you light the fire which consumed them, or sink the ship which
carried them down?'

"'No,' I answer; 'but because I'm blameless shall I become inhuman, and
close my heart to all display of tenderness and pain?'

"And there we have it, miss, over and over again. Ah, I am afraid we
shall never agree!"

"It is lamentable," Agnes agreed, believing that the young man's life in
the solitudes had unsettled his mind. "I never agree with him on that
myself."

The philosopher's hollow, weathered face glowed as she gave this
testimony. He drew a little nearer to her, shaking the long, dark, loose
hair back from his forehead.

"I am glad that you don't think me demented," said he. "Many, who do not
understand the deeper feelings of the soul, do believe it. The
hollow-minded and the unstable commonly lose their small balance of
reason in these hills, miss, with no companionship, month in and month
out, but a dog and the poor, foolish creatures which you see in the
valley yonder. But to one who is a philosopher, and a student of the
higher things, this situation offers room for the expansion of the soul.
Mine has gone forth and enlarged here; it has filled the universe."

"But a man of your education and capabilities," she suggested, thinking
to humor him, "ought to be more congenially situated, it seems to me.
There must be more remunerative pursuits which you could follow?"

"Remuneration for one may not be reward for another," he told her. "I
shall remain here until my mission is accomplished."

He turned to his flock, and, with a motion of the arm, sped his dog to
fetch in some stragglers which seemed straying off waywardly over the
crest of the opposite hill. As he stood so she marked his ascetic
gauntness, and noted that the hand which swung at his side twitched and
clenched, and that the muscles of his cleanly shaved jaws swelled as he
locked his teeth in determination.

"Your mission?" she asked, curious regarding what it might be, there in
the solitude of those barren hills.

"I see that you are armed," he observed irrelevantly, as if the subject
of his mission had been put aside. "I have a very modern weapon of that
pattern in the wagon, but the