friend of the previous evening; and we
shook hands heartily under the pew.

"That letter has just been handed me by an acquaintance from your part
of the country," he whispered; "I trust it contains nothing unpleasant."

I raised it to the light, and on ascertaining that it was sealed and
edged with black, rose and quitted the church, followed by my friend. It
intimated, in two brief lines that my patron, the baronet, had been
killed by a fall from his horse a few evenings before; and that, dying
intestate the allowance which had hitherto enabled me to prosecute my
studies necessarily dropped. I crumpled up the paper in my hand.

"You have learned something very unpleasant," said Ferguson. "Pardon
me--I have no wish to intrude; but, if at all agreeable, I would fain
spend the evening with you."

My heart filled, and grasping his hand, I briefly intimated the purport
of the communication, and we walked out together in the direction of the
ruins.

"It is, perhaps, as hard, Mr. Ferguson," I said, "to fall from one's
hopes as from the place to which they pointed. I was ambitious--too
ambitious, it may be--to rise from that level on which man acts the part
of a machine, and tasks merely his body, to that higher level on which
he performs the proper part of a rational creature, and employs only his
mind. But that ambition need influence me no longer. My poor mother,
too--I had trusted to be of use to her."

"Ah, my friend," said Ferguson, "I can tell you of a case quite as
hopeless as your own--perhaps more so. But it will make you deem my
sympathy the result of mere selfishness. In scarce any respect do our
circumstances differ."

We had reached the ruins: the evening was calm and mild as when I had
walked out on the preceding one; but the hour was earlier, and the sun
hung higher over the hill. A newly-formed grave occupied the level spot
in front of the little ivied corner.

"Let us seat ourselves here," said my companion, "and I will tell you a
story--I am afraid a rather tame one; for there is nothing of adventure
in it, and nothing of incident; but it may at least show you that I am
not unfitted to be your friend. It is now nearly two years since I lost
my father. He was no common man--common neither in intellect nor in
sentiment; but though he once fondly hoped it should be otherwise--for
in early youth he indulged in all the dreams of the poet--he now fills a
grave as nameless as the one before us. He was a n