his brain. What was the use of life? he asked himself. What definite
plan or object could there possibly be in the perpetuation of the human
race?

"To pace the same dull round
On each recurring day,
For seventy years or more
Till strength and hope decay,--
To trust,--and be deceived,--
And standing,--fear to fall!
To find no resting-place--
_Can this be all?_"

Beginning with hope and eagerness, and having confidence in the good
faith of his fellow-men, had he not himself fought a hard fight in the
world, setting before him a certain goal,--a goal which he had won and
passed,--to what purpose? In youth he had been very poor,--and poverty
had served him as a spur to ambition. In middle life he had become one
of the richest men in the world. He had done all that rich and ambitious
men set themselves out to do. He might have said with the Preacher:

"Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them,--I withheld not my
heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced in all my labour, and this was
my portion of all my labour. Then I looked on all the works that my
hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do, and
behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit
under the sun."

He had loved,--or rather, he had imagined he loved,--he had married, and
his wife had dishonoured him. Sons had been born to him, who, with their
mother's treacherous blood in their veins, had brought him to shame by
their conduct,--and now all the kith and kin he had sought to surround
himself with were dead, and he was alone--as alone as he had ever been
at the very commencement of his career. Had his long life of toil led
him only to this? With a sense of dull disappointment, his mind reverted
to the plan he had half entertained of benefiting Tom o' the Gleam in
some way and making him happy by prospering the fortunes of the child he
loved so well,--though he was fully aware that perhaps he could not have
done much in that direction, as it was more than likely that Tom would
have resented the slightest hint of a rich man's patronage. Death,
however, in its fiercest shape, had now put an abrupt end to any such
benevolent scheme, whether or not it might have been feasible,--and,
absorbed in a kind of lethargic reverie, he again and again asked
himself what use he was in the world?--what could he do with the brief
remaining portion of his life?--and how he could dispos