didn't say anything. After a while he asked me how he could see the
people at the hospital about the remains; I gave him my card to the
young doctor there that had charge of Lindau. I suppose he was still
carrying forward his plan of reparation in his mind--to the dead for
the dead. But how useless! If he could have taken the living Lindau home
with him, and cared for him all his days, what would it have profited
the gentle creature whose life his worldly ambition vexed and thwarted
here? He might as well offer a sacrifice at Conrad's grave. Children,"
said March, turning to them, "death is an exile that no remorse and no
love can reach. Remember that, and be good to every one here on earth,
for your longing to retrieve any harshness or unkindness to the dead
will be the very ecstasy of anguish to you. I wonder," he mused, "if
one of the reasons why we're shut up to our ignorance of what is to be
hereafter isn't because if we were sure of another world we might be
still more brutal to one another here, in the hope of making reparation
somewhere else. Perhaps, if we ever come to obey the law of love on
earth, the mystery of death will be taken away."

"Well"--the ancestral Puritanism spoke in Mrs. March--"these two old men
have been terribly punished. They have both been violent and wilful, and
they have both been punished. No one need ever tell me there is not a
moral government of the universe!"

March always disliked to hear her talk in this way, which did both her
head and heart injustice. "And Conrad," he said, "what was he punished
for?"

"He?"--she answered, in an exaltation--"he suffered for the sins of
others."

"Ah, well, if you put it in that way, yes. That goes on continually.
That's another mystery."

He fell to brooding on it, and presently he heard his son saying, "I
suppose, papa, that Mr. Lindau died in a bad cause?"

March was startled. He had always been so sorry for Lindau, and admired
his courage and generosity so much, that he had never fairly considered
this question. "Why, yes," he answered; "he died in the cause of
disorder; he was trying to obstruct the law. No doubt there was a wrong
there, an inconsistency and an injustice that he felt keenly; but it
could not be reached in his way without greater wrong."

"Yes; that's what I thought," said the boy. "And what's the use of our
ever fighting about anything in America? I always thought we could vote
anything we wanted."

"We can, if we'