ry, and provision for life if disabled!"

Not a man came forward, though one man longed to do so; but his sense
of honour, whether true or false, forbade him. Dan Tugwell went heavily
back to his work, trying to be certain that it was his duty. But sad
doubts arose as he watched the brave boat, lifting over the waves in the
moonlight, with loyal arms tugging towards a loyal British ship; and he
felt that he had thrown away his last chance.

CHAPTER XL

SHELFING THE QUESTION

There is a time of day (as everybody must have noticed who is kind
enough to attend to things) not to be told by the clock, nor measured to
a nicety by the position of the sun, even when he has the manners to say
where he is--a time of day dependent on a multiplicity of things unknown
to us (who have made our own brains, by perceiving that we had none,
and working away till we got them), yet palpable to all those less
self-exalted beings, who, or which, are of infinitely nobler origin than
we, and have shown it, by humility. At this time of day every decent
and good animal feels an unthought-of and untraced desire to shift its
position, to come out and see its fellows, to learn what is happening
in the humble grateful world--out of which man has hoisted himself long
ago, and is therefore a spectre to them--to breathe a little sample of
the turn the world is taking, and sue their share of pleasure in the
quiet earth and air.

This time is more observable because it follows a period of the opposite
tendency, a period of heaviness, and rest, and silence, when no bird
sings and no quadruped plays, for about half an hour of the afternoon.
Then suddenly, without any alteration of the light, or weather, or even
temperature, or anything else that we know of, a change of mood flashes
into every living creature, a spirit of life, and activity, and stir,
and desire to use their own voice and hear their neighbour's. The usual
beginning is to come out first into a place that cannot knock their
heads, and there to run a little way, and after that to hop, and take
a peep for any people around, and espying none--or only one of the very
few admitted to be friends--speedily to dismiss all misgivings, take a
very little bit of food, if handy (more as a duty to one's family than
oneself, for the all-important supper-time is not come yet), and then,
if gifted by the Lord with wings--for what bird can stoop at such a
moment to believe that his own grandfather