nce last year. You will
respect it? You will, you shall respect it?"

She bent her head in acquiescence--that was all. She had not uttered a
single syllable. Her silence almost drove me wild.

"What! not one word? not one ordinary message from a friend to a
friend?--one who is lying ill, too!"

Still silence.

"Better so!" I cried, made desperate at last. "Better, if it must be,
that he should die and go to the God who made him--ay, made him, as you
shall yet see, too noble a man to die for any woman's love."

I left her--left her where she sat, and went my way.

Of the hours that followed the less I say the better. My mind was in a
tumult of pain, in which right and wrong were strangely confused. I
could not decide--I can scarcely decide now--whether what I had done
ought to have been done; I only know that I did it--did it under an
impulse so sudden and impetuous that it seemed to me like the guidance
of Providence. All I could do afterwards was to trust the result where
we say we trust all things, and yet are for ever disquieting ourselves
in vain--we of little faith!

I have said, and I say again, that I believe every true marriage--of
which there is probably one in every five thousand of conjugal
unions--is brought about by heaven, and heaven only; and that all human
influence is powerless either to make or to mar that happy end.
Therefore, to heaven I left this marriage, if such it was destined to
be. And so, after a season, I calmed myself enough to dare entering
that quiet sick-chamber, where no one ever entered but Jael and me.

The old woman met me at the door.

"Come in gently, Phineas; I do think there is a change."

A change!--that awful word! I staggered rather than walked to John's
bed-side.

Ay, there was a change, but not THAT one--which made my blood run cold
in my veins even to think of. Thank God for evermore for His great
mercies--not THAT change!

John was sitting up in bed. New life shone in his eyes, in his whole
aspect. Life and--no, not hope, but something far better, diviner.

"Phineas, how tired you look; it is time you were in bed."

The old way of speaking--the old, natural voice, as I had not heard it
for weeks. I flung myself by the bed-side--perhaps I wept
outright--God knows! It is thought a shame for a man to weep; yet One
Man wept, and that too was over His friend--His brother.

"You must not grieve over me any more, dear lad; to-morrow, please God!
I