ing after Mantel had uttered those solemn words, and looked out
over the housetops to the water of the great river. It was long after
midnight, and not a sound broke the stillness. Fleecy clouds were
drifting across the sky, and a vessel under full sail was going silently
down the river toward the open sea. They had involuntarily clasped each
other's hands, and as their hearts opened and disclosed their secrets
they were drawn closer and closer together until their arms stole about
each other's necks. For a few brief moments they were boys again. The
vices that had hardened their hearts and shut their souls up in lonely
isolation relaxed their hold. That sympathy which knit the hearts of
David and Johnathan together made their's beat as one.

David broke the silence. "I cannot bear to leave you, Mantel. Join me.
Such feelings as these which stir us so deeply to-night do not come too
often. It must be dangerous to resist them. I suppose there are slight
protests and aspirations in the soul all the time, but these to-night
are like the flood of the tide."

"Yes," said Mantel; "the Nile flows through Egypt every day, but flows
over it only once a year."

"And this is the time to sow the seed, isn't it?"

"So they say. But you must remember that you feel this more deeply than
I do, Davy. I am moved. I have a desire to do better, but it isn't large
enough. It is like a six-inch stream trying to turn a seven-foot wheel.

"Don't make light of it, Mantel!"

"I don't mean to, but you must not overestimate the impressions made on
me. I am not so good as you think."

"I wish you had the courage to be as good as you are."

"But there is no use trying to be what I am not. If I should start off
with you, I should never be able to follow you. My old self would get
the victory. In the long run, a man will be himself. 'Nature is often
hidden, sometimes overcome--seldom extinguished.'"

"What a mood you are in, Mantel! It makes me shiver to hear you talk so.
Here I am, full of hope and purpose; my heart on fire; believing in
life; confident of the outcome; and you, a better man by nature than I
am, sitting here, cold as a block of ice, and the victim of despair! I
ought to be able to do something! Sweet as life is to me to-night, I
feel that I could lay it down to save you."

"Dear fellow!" said Mantel, grasping his hands and choking with emotion;
"you don't know how that moves me! It can't seem half so strange to you
as it do