t I detected something of the old restlessness. Has the
coming of spring, quickening the life forces all around you, stirred the
life currents in your own veins till your spirit is again tugging at its
fetters in its struggles for release?"

With a startled movement Darrell raised his head, meeting the clear eyes
fixed upon him.

"How could you know?" he demanded.

"Because, as Emerson says, 'the heart in thee is the heart of all.'
There are few hearts whose pulses are not stirred by the magic influence
of the springtide, and under its potent spell I knew you would feel your
present limitations even more keenly than ever before."

"Thank God, you understand!" Darrell exclaimed; then continued,
passionately: "The last three weeks have been torture to me if I but
allowed myself one moment's thought. Wherever I look I see life--life,
perfect and complete in all its myriad forms--the life that is denied to
me! This is not living,--this existence of mine,--with brain shackled,
fettered, in many ways helpless as a child, knowing less than a child,
and not even mercifully wrapped in oblivion, but compelled to feel the
constant goading and galling of the fetters, to be reminded of them at
every turn! My God! if it were not for constant work and study I would
go mad!"

In the silence which followed Darrell's mind reverted to that autumn day
on which he had first met John Britton and confided to him his trouble;
and now, as then, he was soothed and strengthened by the presence beside
him, by the magnetism of that touch, although no word was spoken.

As he reviewed their friendship of the past months he became conscious
for the first time of its one-sidedness. He had often unburdened himself
to his friend, confiding to him his griefs, and receiving in turn
sympathy and counsel; but of the great, unknown sorrow that had wrought
such havoc in his own life, what word had John Britton ever spoken? As
Darrell recalled the bearing of his friend through all their
acquaintance and his silence regarding his own sufferings, his eyes grew
dim. The man at his side seemed, in the light of that revelation,
stronger, grander, nobler than ever before; not unlike to the giant
peaks whose hoary heads then loomed darkly against the starlit sky,
calm, silent, majestic, giving no token of the throes of agony which,
ages agone, had rent them asunder except in the mystic symbols graven on
their furrowed brows. In that light his own complaints seem