s he lay
helpless in his cot on the Red Sea.

The consequent depression, acting on his already exhausted powers after
he reached Alexandria, brought him to the verge of the grave. Indeed,
one of the nurses said one day to one of her fellows, with a shake of
her head, "Ah! poor fellow, he won't last long!"

"Won't he!" thought Miles, with a feeling of strong indignation. "Much
_you_ know about it!"

You see Miles possessed a tendency to abstract reasoning, and could
meditate upon his own case without, so to speak, much reference to
himself! His indignation was roused by the fact that any one, calling
herself a nurse, should be so stupid as to whisper beside a patient
words that he should not hear. He did not know that the nurse in
question was a new one--not thoroughly alive to her duties and
responsibilities. Strange to say, her stupidity helped to render her
own prophecy incorrect, for the indignation quickened the soldier's
feeble pulse, and that gave him a fillip in the right direction.

The prostration, however, was very great, and for some time the life of
our hero seemed to hang by a thread. During this dark period the value
of a godly mother's teaching became deeply impressed on him, by the fact
that texts from God's Word, which had been taught him in childhood, and
which he seemed to have quite forgotten, came trooping into his mind,
and went a long way to calm and comfort him. He dwelt with special
pleasure on those that told of love and mercy in Jesus to the thankless
and undeserving; for, now that strength, health, and the high hopes of a
brilliant career were shattered at one blow, his eyes were cleared of
life's glamour to see that in his existence hitherto he had been
ungodly--not in the sense of his being much worse than ordinary people,
but in the sense of his being quite indifferent to his Maker, and that
his fancied condition of not-so-badness would not stand the test of a
dying hour.

About this time, too, he became desperately anxious to write to his
mother, not by dictation, but with his own hand. This being impossible
in the circumstances, he began to fret, and his power to sleep at length
failed him. Then a strange desire to possess a rose seized him--perhaps
because he knew it to be his mother's favourite flower. Whatever the
cause, the longing increased his insomnia, and as he did not say,
perhaps did not know, that the want of a rose had anything to do with
his complaint, no one