a knife or something to throw at my head. I couldn't help
laughing. It was a scene in the grand style between two Great Powers in
the world-competition.

A couple of days later I was standing at the forge, when I heard a
shriek from my wife. I rushed out--what could be the matter? Merle was
down by the fence already, and all at once I saw what it was--there was
Asta, lying on the ground under the body of a great beast.

And then--Well, Merle tells me it was I that tore the thing away from
the little bundle of clothes beneath it, and carried our little girl
home.

A doctor is often a good refuge in trouble, but though he may sew up a
ragged tear in a child's throat ever so neatly, it doesn't necessarily
follow that it will help much.

There was a mother, though, that would not let him go--that cried and
prayed and clung about him, begging him to try once more if nothing
could be done. And when at last he was gone, she was always for going
after him again, and grovelled on the floor and tore her hair--could
not, would not, believe what she knew was true.

And that night a father and mother sat up together, staring strangely in
front of them. The mother was quiet now. The child was laid out, decked
and ready. The father sat by the window, looking out. It was in May, and
the night was grey.

Now it was that I began to realise how every great sorrow leads us
farther and farther out on the promontory of existence. I had come to
the outermost point now--there was no more.

And I discovered too, dear friend, that these many years of adversity
had shaped me not in one but in various moulds, for I had in me the
stuff for several quite distinct persons, and now the work was done, and
they could break free from my being and go their several ways.

I saw a man rush out into the night, shaking his fist at heaven and
earth; a madman who refused to play his part in the farce any more, and
so rushed down towards the river.

But I myself sat there still.

And I saw another, a puny creature, let loose; a humble, ashen-grey
ascetic, that bent his head and bowed under the lash, and said: "Thy
will be done. The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away--" A pitiful being
this, that stole out into the night and disappeared.

But I myself sat there still.

I sat alone on the promontory of existence, with the sun and the stars
gone out, and ice-cold emptiness above me, about me, and in me, on every
side.

But then, my friend, by deg