e has meant them to be fatal. We call in the doctor
in the one case, or the counsellor in the other, out of habit rather
than out of hope. Our own consciousness has already whispered that
nothing can be of use; but we like to do as our neighbors, and so we
take remedies and follow injunctions to the last. The wise man quickly
detects by the character of the means how emergent is the case believed
to be, and rightly judges that recourse to violent measures implies the
presence of great peril. If he be really wise, then he desists at once
from what can only torture his few remaining hours. They can be given to
better things than the agonies of such agency. To this exact point has
my case come, and by the counsels you have given me do I read my danger!
Your only remedy is as bad as the malady it is meant to cure! I cannot
take it!"

"Accepting your own imagery, I would say," said Upton, "that you are
one who will not submit to an operation of some pain that he might be
cured."

Glencore sat moodily for some moments without speaking; at last he
said,--

"I feel as though continual change of place and scene would be a relief
to me. Let us rendezvous, therefore, somewhere for the autumn, and
meanwhile I 'll wander about alone."

"What direction do you purpose to take?"

"The Schwarzwald and the Hohlenthal, first. I want to revisit a place I
knew in happier days. Memory must surely have something besides sorrows
to render us. I owned a little cottage there once, near Steig. I fished
and read Uhland for a summer long. I wonder if I could resume the same
life. I knew the whole village,--the blacksmith, the schoolmaster, the
Dorfrichter,--all of them. Good, kind souls they were: how they wept
when we parted! Nothing consoled them but my having purchased the
cottage, and promised to come back again!"

Upton was glad to accept even this much of interest in the events of
life, and drew Glencore on to talk of the days he had passed in this
solitary region.

As in the dreariest landscape a ray of sunlight will reveal some
beautiful effects, making the eddies of the dark pool to glitter,
lighting up the russet moss, and giving to the half-dried lichen a tinge
of bright color, so will, occasionally, memory throw over a life of
sorrow a gleam of happier meaning. Faces and events, forms and accents,
that once found the way to our hearts, come back again, faintly and
imperfectly it may be, but with a touch that revives in us what