ious,
for then only is it his."

"You are splitting a hair!"

"If the only way to life lay through a hair, what must you do but split
it? The fact, however, is, that he who takes the live sphere of truth
for a flat intellectual disc, may well take the disc's edge for a hair."

"Come, come! how does all this apply to me--a man who would really like
to make up his mind about the thing, and is not at the moment aware of
any very pressing duty that he is neglecting to do?"

"Is your lordship not aware of some not very pressing duty that you are
neglecting to do? Some duties need but to be acknowledged by the
smallest amount of action, to become paramount in their demands upon
us."

"That is the worst of it!" murmured the earl. "I refuse, I avoid such
acknowledgment! Who knows whither it might carry me, or what it might
not go on to demand of me!"

He spoke like one unaware that he spoke.

"Yes, my lord," said Donal, "that is how most men treat the greatest
things! The devil blinds us that he may guide us!"

"The devil!--bah!" cried his lordship, glad to turn at right angles
from the path of the conversation; "you don't surely believe in that
legendary personage?"

"He who does what the devil would have him do, is the man who believes
in him, not he who does not care whether he is or not, so long as he
avoids doing his works. If there be such a one, his last thought must
be to persuade men of his existence! He is a subject I do not care to
discuss; he is not very interesting to me. But if your lordship now
would but overcome the habit of depending on medicine, you would soon
find out that you had a free will."

His lordship scowled like a thunder-cloud.

"I am certain, my lord," added Donal, "that the least question asked by
the will itself, will bring an answer; a thousand asked by the
intellect, will bring nothing."

"I did not send for you to act the part of father confessor, Mr.
Grant," said his lordship, in a tone which rather perplexed Donal; "but
as you have taken upon you the office, I may as well allow you keep it;
the matter to which you refer, that of my medical treatment of myself,
is precisely what has brought me into my present difficulty. It would
be too long a story to tell you how, like poor Coleridge, I was first
decoyed, then enticed from one stage to another; the desire to escape
from pain is a natural instinct; and that, and the necessity also for
escaping my past self, especially in its