strugglers, all pressing
onward for the same goal--independence, wealth, renown. Little as Mary
know of the world by experience, she had at least heard the wiseacres
talk; and that which she had heard was calculated to depress rather than
to inspire industrious youth. She had heard how the professions were all
over-crowded: how a mighty army of young men were walking the hospitals,
all intent on feeling the pulses and picking the pockets of the rising
generation: how at the Bar men were growing old and grey before they saw
their first brief: how competitors were elbowing and hustling each other
upon every road, thronging at every gate. And while masculine youth
strove and wrestled for places in the race, aunts and sisters and
cousins were pressing into the same arena, doing their best to crowd out
the uncles and the brothers and the nephews.

'Poor Jack,' sighed Mary, 'at the worst we can go to the Red River
country and grow corn.'

This was her favourite fancy, that she and her lover should find their
first dwelling in the new world, live as humbly as the peasants lived
round Grasmere, and patiently wait upon fortune. And yet that would not
be happiness, unless Maulevrier were to come and stay with them every
autumn. Nothing could reconcile Mary to being separated from Maulevrier
for any lengthened period.

There were hours in which she was more hopeful, and defied the
wiseacres. Clever young men had succeeded in the past--clever men whose
hair was not yet grey had come to the front in the present. Granted that
these were the exceptional men, the fine flower of humanity. Did she not
know that John Hammond was as far above average youth as Helvellyn was
above yonder mound in her grandmother's shrubbery?

Yes, he would succeed in literature, in politics, in whatever career he
had chosen for himself. He was a man to do the thing he set himself to
do, were it ever so difficult. To doubt his success would be to doubt
his truth and his honesty; for he had sworn to her he would make her
life bright and happy, and that evil days should never come to her; and
he was not the man to promise that which he was not able to perform.

The house seemed terribly dull now that the two young men were gone.
There was an oppressive silence in the rooms which had lately resounded
with Maulevrier's frank, boyish laughter, and with his friend's deep,
manly tones--a silence broken only by the click of Fraeulein Mueller's
needles.

The F