restless, and as I went to his
side, opened his eyes with a look of full, startled consciousness.

"I'm about played out, old fellow, aint I?" he groaned.

I motioned to him to be silent.

"No," he went on, in a strained whisper, "it is no use now. I know
well enough how I stand. You needn't try to fool me."

He lay for a while motionless, while his eyes wandered restlessly
about the room. He made an effort to speak, but his words were
inaudible. I stooped over him, laying my ear to his mouth.

"Can--can you lend me five dollars?"

I nodded.

"You will find--a pawnbroker's check--in my vest pocket," he
continued. "The address is--is--on it. Redeem it. It is a ring. Send
it--to--to the Countess von Brehm--with--with--my compliments," he
finished with a groan.

We spent several hours in silence. About three o'clock the doctor paid
a brief visit; and I read in his face that the end was near. The first
sunbeams stole through the closed shutters and scattered little
quivering fragments of light upon the carpet. A deep stillness reigned
about us. As I sat watching the defaced ruin of what had been, to me
at least, one of the noblest forms which a human spirit ever
inhabited, the past moved in a vivid retrospect before my eye, and
many strange reflections thronged upon me. Presently Dannevig called
me and I stood again bowing over him.

"When you--bury me," he said in a broken whisper. "Carry my--cross
of--Dannebrog--on a cushion after me." And again after a moment's
pause: "I have--made a--nice mess of it, haven t I? I--I--think it
would--have--have been better for--me, if--I had been--somebody else."

Within an hour he was dead. Myself and two policemen followed him to
the grave; and the cross of Dannebrog, with a much soiled red ribbon,
was carried on a velvet cushion after his coffin.

MABEL AND I.

(A PHILOSOPHICAL FAIRY TALE.)

I.

"I want to see things as they are," said I to Mabel.

"I don't see how else you can see them," answered Mabel, with a laugh.
"You certainly don't see them as they are not."

"Yes, I do," said I. "I see men and things only as they _seem_. It is
so exasperating to think that I can never get beyond the surface of
anything. My friends may appear very good and beautiful to me, and yet
I may all the while have a suspicion that the appearance is deceitful,
that they are really neither good nor beautiful."

"In case that was so, I shouldn't want to know it," said Mabel.