e native instinct strong therefor. They had meant to
say "the night cometh"; but some one interfered and he said to himself:
"The night is far spent--the day is at hand," for, after all, the
setting sun has morning in its heart.

He dismissed the cab, and entering the hotel, made some enquiry about
the trains for the North. He could not start North before midnight. The
evening was fine, and he walked out. St. George's Hall arrested him with
its elaborate grandeur. What beauty, what chastity, what becoming signs
of civic wealth! When he came to its massive steps he cast his eyes upon
them, and behold, they were dripping with poverty! The victims of want
in mid-career were there, and drooping age, unequally yoked with
poverty, and frowzy women with ribald face; and chief among them all,
little children, some blear-eyed, some pallid with want, some with the
legacy of sores--for they had been shapen in iniquity.

But all alike--and herein was the anguish of it--all alike were bent on
play, and persisted pitifully in the cruel farce. The little bare feet
pattered up and down the steps--but the steps were stone.

Michael Blake thought of his adopted home across the sea and its green
fields and tree-graced meadows. Then he thought of the far Western
plains, vast beyond human fancy, waiting and calling for the tired feet
of all who spend weary lives in the old land, playing on stone steps,
while wealth and grandeur smile above them. In a few minutes he turned
away, for the folk of his country are not accustomed to the sight of
hungry children; and a woman under drink is something that many of their
eldest have never seen at all.

The sound of martial music, and the voice of cheering thousands, fell
upon his ear. He moved towards it. Soon the surging procession broke
upon him. "Who are these?" he asked, "these fellows in Khaki?" They had
their rifles in their hands, and some were slightly lame, and some had
the signs of wounds--and all had the rich stain of battle on them. "Art
thou only a stranger?" he is asked in turn, "and knowest not the things
that are come to pass? These are they who have come out of Paardeburg,
homeward bound by way of the ancestral home, and the tide of British
love and gratitude wafts them on their course."

He is soon caught in the swelling throng, his own head bare, his own
voice blending in the Imperial hosannah. He catches a familiar face
among the soldiers; he hears the strain of the "Maple Lea