fiend coming over the
field to meet him, and had to wage a deadly combat with many a doubt and
hard, despairing thought. 'You are a wreck, Michael Burnett!' the grim
tempter seemed to say to him. 'Better be quit of it all! Before you are
thirty your work is over; what will you do with the remainder of your
life? You are poor--perhaps crippled; no woman will look at you. You
have your Cross--a little bit of rusty iron--but does such empty glory
avail? You have aches and pains in plenty; your future looks promising,
my fine fellow! A hero! In truth those ten minutes have cost you dearly!
no wonder you repent of your rash gallantry!'

'I repent of nothing,' Michael would rejoin, in that dumb inward
argument so often renewed. 'If it were to come over again, I would do
just the same. "Greater love hath no man than this";' for in his
semi-delirious hours those Divine words seemed to set themselves to
solemn music, and to echo in his brain with ceaseless repetition. 'A
life given, a life laid down, a life spent in suffering--is it not all
the same--a soldier's duty? Shall I shirk my fate? Would it not be
better to bear it like a man?' and Michael would set his teeth hard, and
with an inward prayer for patience--for in the struggle the man was
learning to pray--girded himself up again to the daily fight.

Once, when there had been a fresh outbreak of mischief, and they had
brought him down to Woodcote, that he might be more carefully nursed
than in the town lodgings which was all Michael Burnett called home,
Audrey, who, after her usual pitiful fashion, wore herself out in her
efforts to soothe and comfort the invalid, once read to him some
beautiful lines out of a poem entitled 'The Disciples.'

Michael, who was in one of his dark moods, made no comment on the
passage which she had read in a trembling voice of deep feeling; but
when she left the room on some errand, he stretched out his hand, and
read it over again:

'But if, impatient, thou let slip thy cross,
Thou wilt not find it in this world again,
Nor in another; here, and here alone,
Is given thee to suffer for God's sake.'

When Audrey returned the book was in its place, and Michael was lying
with his eyes closed, and the frown of pain still knitting his temples.
He was not asleep, but she dare not disturb him by offering to go on
with the poem. She sat down at a little distance and looked out of the
window, rather sorrowfully. How strong she