hat were Britannula to appeal aloud to England, England,
with that desire for interference which has always characterised her,
would interfere. But if the empire allowed the working of the law
to be commenced in silence, then the Fixed Period might perhaps be
regarded as a thing settled. How much, then, depended on the words
which I might use!

"Crasweller," I said, "my friend, my brother!"

"I don't know much about that. A man ought not to be so anxious to
kill his brother."

"If I could take your place, as God will be my judge, I would do so
with as ready a step as a young man to the arms of his beloved. And
if for myself, why not for my brother?"

"You do not know," he said. "You have not, in truth, been tried."

"Would that you could try me!"

"And we are not all made of such stuff as you. You have talked about
this till you have come to be in love with deposition and departure.
But such is not the natural condition of a man. Look back upon all
the centuries, and you will perceive that life has ever been dear
to the best of men. And you will perceive also that they who have
brought themselves to suicide have encountered the contempt of their
fellow-creatures."

I would not tell him of Cato and Brutus, feeling that I could not
stir him to grandeur of heart by Roman instances. He would have told
me that in those days, as far as the Romans knew,

"the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter."

I must reach him by other methods than these, if at all. "Who can be
more alive than you," I said, "to the fact that man, by the fear of
death, is degraded below the level of the brutes?"

"If so, he is degraded," said Crasweller. "It is his condition."

"But need he remain so? Is it not for you and me to raise him to a
higher level?"

"Not for me--not for me, certainly. I own that I am no more than
man. Little Christchurch is so pleasant to me, and Eva's smiles and
happiness; and the lowing of my flocks and the bleating of my sheep
are so gracious in my ears, and it is so sweet to my eyes to see how
fairly I have turned this wilderness into a paradise, that I own that
I would fain stay here a little longer."

"But the law, my friend, the law,--the law which you yourself have
been so active in creating."

"The law allows me two years yet," said he; that look of stubbornness
which I had before observed again spreading itself over his face.

Now this was a lie; an absolute, undoub