ll bearing his breakfast.

"There," he said. "I've got something good for you this morning. How
did you sleep?"

"Scarcely at all," replied Paul quietly. "You can take away this; I
shall not eat it."

"Eat it, man; it is the best breakfast you've had for many a day, and
it'll help you to go through with it."

"No," replied Paul quietly; "I'll go through it without that."

There was a sad, wistful look in his eye. He knew that the dread hour
had nearly come, and that he must bid good-bye to everything. During
the previous evening he had been in a state of great excitement. He
had listened eagerly for the coming of Mary and his father, but they
never came. In a numb sort of way he wondered why. He would like to
have bidden them good-bye. He longed to hold Mary in his arms once
more, and longed, too, to tell his father that he forgave him. For he
had to confess to himself at last that he had done this. With death
knocking at the gates of life, it seemed to him he could do no other.
His father had sinned, but he had done his best to atone. Of course,
all was vain, and the tangled skein of life had not been straightened
out. He felt that somehow life with him had begun wrong, and it had
continued wrong to the end. Still, there was a quiet resignation in
his heart which almost surprised him. At that moment he could have
said with Tennyson, "And yet we trust that somehow good will be the
final goal of ill." As for the future--well, he would soon solve its
mystery. He did not want to die; rather, he longed to live--he had so
much to live for in spite of everything. Of course, Mary could never
be his wife, but he could love her and guard her and cherish her all
the same. As for the rest----

He felt a kind of curiosity as to what the future would bring forth.
He looked at his hands, so strong, nervous, vigorous, and thought that
in a few hours they would be inert, lifeless. That something which men
call "life" would be gone. Where would he be? For the first time in
his life he felt almost certain that the essential "he" would continue
to be. Where, and under what circumstances, he wondered? Well, he
should know soon.

A little later he was out under a dark, gloomy sky. He saw a great
black cloud hanging in the heavens. Here and there was a patch of blue
where the stars peeped out. It was bitterly cold, and he felt himself
shivering. Others were there, too; strange, shadowy looking figures
the