g skiffs danced merrily up
and down from Minehead to Weircombe and back again with the ease and
security of seabirds, whose happiest resting-place is on the waves. A
lovely calm environed the little village,--it was not a haunt of cheap
"trippers,"--and summer-time was not only a working-time, but a playing
time too with all the inhabitants, both young and old. The shore, with
its fine golden sand, warm with the warmth of the cloudless sky, was a
popular resort, and Helmsley, though his physical weakness perceptibly
increased, was often able to go down there, assisted by Mary and Angus,
one on each side supporting him and guarding his movements. It pleased
him to sit under the shelter of the rocks and watch the long shining
ripples of ocean roll forwards and backwards on the shore in silvery
lines, edged with delicate, lace-like fringes of foam,--and the slow,
monotonous murmur of the gathering and dispersing water soothed his
nerves and hushed a certain inward fretfulness of spirit which teased
him now and then, but to which he bravely strove not to give way.
Sometimes--but only sometimes--he felt that it was hard to die. Hard to
be old just as he was beginning to learn how to live,--hard to pass out
of the beauty and wonder of this present life with all its best joys
scarcely experienced, and exchange the consciousness of what little he
knew for something concerning which no one could honestly give him any
authentic information.

"Yet I might have said the same, had I been conscious, before I was
born!" he thought. "In a former state of existence I might have said,
'Why send me from this that I know and enjoy, to something which I have
not seen and therefore cannot believe in?' Perhaps, for all I can tell,
I did say it. And yet God had His way with me and placed me here--for
what? Only to learn a lesson! That is truly all I have done. For the
making of money is as nothing in the sight of Eternal Law,--it is
merely man's accumulation of perishable matter, which, like all
perishable things, is swept away in due course, while he who accumulated
it is of no more account as a mere corpse than his poverty-stricken
brother. What a foolish striving it all is! What envyings, spites,
meannesses and miserable pettinesses arise from this greed of money!
Yes, I have learned my lesson! I wonder whether I shall now be permitted
to pass into a higher standard, and begin again!"

These inner musings sometimes comforted and sometimes