alled from their breakfast by the bustle, and
joined also in this strange chase. A whoop, a cry, and they were drawn
round to the corner of the yard on which Miss Dolly's window opened.
There he lay within a few yards of the window, his face upon the stones,
his feet thrusting out from his tattered night-gown, and his track
marked by the blood from his wounded knees. One hand was thrown out
before him, and in it he held a little sprig of the pink dog-rose.

They carried him back, cold and stiff, to the pallet in the loft, and
the old nurse drew the sheet over him and left him, for there was no
need to watch him now. The girl had gone to her room, and her mother
followed her thither, all unnerved by this glimpse of death.

"And to think," said she, "that it was only _him_, after all."

But Dolly sat at the side of her bed, and sobbed bitterly in her apron.

"DE PROFUNDIS"

So long as the oceans are the ligaments which bind together the great
broad-cast British Empire, so long will there be a dash of romance in
our minds. For the soul is swayed by the waters, as the waters are by
the moon, and when the great highways of an empire are along such roads
as these, so full of strange sights and sounds, with danger ever running
like a hedge on either side of the course, it is a dull mind indeed
which does not bear away with it some trace of such a passage. And
now, Britain lies far beyond herself, for the three-mile limit of every
seaboard is her frontier, which has been won by hammer and loom and pick
rather than by arts of war. For it is written in history that neither
king nor army can bar the path to the man who having twopence in his
strong box, and knowing well where he can turn it to threepence, sets
his mind to that one end. And as the frontier has broadened, the mind of
Britain has broadened too, spreading out until all men can see that the
ways of the island are continental, even as those of the Continent are
insular.

But for this a price must be paid, and the price is a grievous one. As
the beast of old must have one young human life as a tribute every year,
so to our Empire we throw from day to day the pick and flower of our
youth. The engine is world-wide and strong, but the only fuel that will
drive it is the lives of British men. Thus it is that in the grey old
cathedrals, as we look round upon the brasses on the walls, we see
strange names, such names as they who reared those walls had never
heard