color, grayer of beard, more nervous perhaps in voice and breathing. His manner to Hemmings was full of flattering courtesy; but his sly ironical glances played on the secretary's armor like a fountain on a hippopotamus. To Scorrier, however, he could not show enough affection.

The first evening, when Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up like a boy out of school.

'So I'm going to get a wigging,' he said; 'I suppose I deserve it; but if you knew if you only knew! Out here they've nicknamed me "the King"; they say I rule the colony. It's myself that I can't rule.' And with a sudden burst of passion such as Scorrier had never seen in him: 'Why did they send this man here? What can he know about the things that I've been through?' In a moment he calmed down again. "There! this is very stupid; worrying you like this!' And with a long, kind look into Scorrier's face, he hustled him off to bed.

Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind the bars of his courteous irony. Intuition of danger had evidently smitten Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his visit. There were moments when Scorrier's common sense sided with Hemmings, these were moments when the secretary was not present.

'After all,' he told himself, 'it's a little thing to ask, one letter a month. I never heard of such a case.'

It was wonderful how they stood it! It showed how much they valued Pippin! What was the matter with him? What was the nature of his trouble?

One glimpse Scorrier had when even Hemmings, as he phrased it, received 'quite a turn.' It was during a drive back from the most outlying of the company's trial mines, eight miles through the forest. The track led

VOL. 106-NO. 3

through a belt of trees blackened by a forest fire. Pippin was driving. The secretary, seated beside him, wore an expression of faint alarm, such as Pippin's driving had the power to evoke. The sky had darkened strangely, but pale streaks of light, coming from one knew not where, filtered through the trees. No breath was stirring; the wheels and horses' hoofs made no sound on the deep fern-mould. All around, the burned tree-trunks, leafless and jagged, rose like withered giants, the passages between them were black, the sky black, and black the silence. No one spoke, and literally the only sound was Pippin's breathing. What was it that was so terrifying? Scorrier had a feeling of entombment; that nobody could help him; the feeling of being face to face with nature; a sensation as if all the comfort and security of words and rules had dropped away from him. And nothing happened. They reached home and dined.

During dinner he had again that old remembrance of a little man chopping with his sword at a castle. It came in a moment when Pippin had raised his hand with the carving-knife grasped in it, to answer some remark of Hemmings's about the future of the company. The optimism in his uplifted chin, the strenuous energy in his whispering voice, gave Scorrier a more vivid glimpse of Pippin's nature than he had perhaps ever had before. This new country, where nothing but himself could help a man that was the castle! No wonder Pippin was impatient of control, no wonder he was out of hand, no wonder he was silent chopping away at that!

And suddenly he thought, 'Yes, and all the time one knows that Nature's sure to beat you in the end!'

That very evening Hemmings delivered himself of his reproof. He had sat unusually silent; Scorrier, indeed,

had thought him a little drunk, so portentous was his gravity. Suddenly, however, he rose. It was hard on a man, he said, in his position, with a Board (he spoke as of a family of small children), to be kept so short of information. He was actually compelled to use his imagination to answer the shareholders' questions. This was painful and humiliating; he had never heard of any secretary having to use his imagination! He went further-it was insulting! He had grown gray in the service of the company. Mr. Scorrier would bear him out when he said he had a position to maintain name in the city was a high one; and, by George! he was going to keep it a high one; he would allow nobody to drag it in the dust-that ought clearly to be understood. His directors felt they were being treated like children; it was absurd to suppose that he (Hemmings) could be treated like a child! The secretary paused; his eyes seemed to bully the room.

his

'If there were no London office,' murmured Pippin, 'the shareholders would get the same dividends.'

Pippin shrank so visibly that Hemmings seemed troubled by a suspicion that he had gone too far.

'We know,' he said, 'that it was trying for you

'Trying!' burst out Pippin.

'No one can say,' Hemmings resumed soothingly, 'that we have not dealt liberally.'

Pippin made a motion of the head.

'We think we have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent superintendent. What I say is, Let's be pleasant! I am not making an unreasonable request!'

He ended on a fitting note of jocularity; and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own room, without another word.

In the course of the next day Pippin said to Scorrier, 'It seems I have been very wicked. I must try to do better'; and with a touch of bitter humor,

'What help did I get from London when I first came here? What help have I ever had?'

Hemmings swayed, recovered, and with a forced smile replied that, if this were true, he had been standing on his head for years; he did not believe the attitude possible for such a length of time; personally he would have thought that he too had had a little something to say to the company's position, but no matter! His irony was crushing.

Hemmings went on: It was possible that Mr. Pippin hoped to reverse the existing laws of the universe with regard to 'limited companies; he would merely say that he must not begin with a company of which he (Hemmings)

good superintendent, you see! After that I must try hard.'

Scorrier broke in: 'No man could have done so much for them'; and, carried away by an impulse to put things absolutely straight, went on, 'But, after all, a letter now and thenwhat does it amount to?'

Pippin besieged him with a subtle glance. 'You too?' he said; ‘I must indeed have been a wicked man!' and turned away.

Scorrier felt as if he had been guilty of brutality; sorry for Pippin, angry with himself; angry with Pippin, sorry for himself. He earnestly desired to see the back of Hemmings. The secretary gratified the wish a few days later, departing by steamer with pon

derous expressions of regard and the assurance of his good-will.

Pippin gave vent to no outburst of relief, maintaining a courteous silence, making only one allusion to his late guest, in answer to a remark of Scorrier's: 'Ah! don't tempt me! must n't speak behind his back.'

VI

A month passed, and Scorrier still remained Pippin's guest. As each mailday approached, he experienced a queer suppressed excitement. On one of On one of these occasions Pippin had withdrawn to his room; and when Scorrier went to fetch him to dinner he found him with his head leaning on his hands, amid a perfect litter of torn paper. He looked up at Scorrier.

'I can't do it,' he said, 'I feel such a hypocrite; I can't put myself into leading-strings again. Why should I ask these people, when I've settled everything already? If it were a vital matter they would n't want to hear they'd simply wire, "Manage this somehow!"

Scorrier said nothing, but thought privately, "This is a mad business!' What was a letter? Why make a fuss about a letter?

The approach of mail-day seemed like a nightmare to the superintendent; he became feverishly nervous, like a man under a spell; and, when the mail had gone, behaved like a respited criminal. And this had been going on two years! Ever since that explosion. Why, it was monomania!

One day, a month after Hemmings's departure, Pippin rose early from dinner; his face was flushed, he had been drinking wine.

to say that he was going for a walk. Pippin gave him a kindly nod.

It was a cool, still evening; innumerable stars swarmed in clusters over the forests, forming bright hieroglyphics in the middle heavens, showering over the dark harbor into the sea. Scorrier walked slowly. A weight seemed lifted from his mind, so entangled had he become in that uncanny silence. At last Pippin had broken through the spell. To get that letter sent would be the laying of a phantom, the rehabilitation of common sense. Now that this silence was in the throes of being broken, he felt curiously tender toward Pippin, without the hero-worship of old days, but with a queer protective feeling. After all, he was different from other men. In spite of his feverish, tenacious energy, in spite of his ironic humor, there was something of the woman in him! And as for this silence, this horror of control - all geniuses had 'bees in their bonnets,' and Pippin was a genius in his way!

He looked back at the town. Brilliantly lighted, it had a thriving air, difficult to believe of the place he remembered ten years back. The sounds of drinking, gambling, laughter, and dancing floated to his ears. 'Quite a city!' he thought. With this queer elation on him he walked slowly back along the street, forgetting that he was simply an oldish mining expert, with a look of shabbiness, such as clings to men who are always traveling, as if their 'nap' were forever being rubbed off. And he thought of Pippin, creator of this glory.

He had passed the boundaries of the town, and had entered the forest. A feeling of discouragement instantly beset him. The scents and silence, after

The latter could hear him writing in the next room, and looked in presently

were undefinably oppressive. Notwithstanding, he walked a long time, saying to himself that he would give the

letter every chance. At last, when he thought that Pippin must have finished, he went back to the house.

Pippin had finished. His forehead rested on the table, his arms hung at his sides; he was stone-dead! His face wore a smile, and by his side lay an empty laudanum bottle.

The letter, closely, beautifully written, lay before him. It was a fine document, clear, masterly, detailed, nothing slurred, nothing concealed, nothing omitted; a complete review of the company's position; it ended with the words,

'Your humble servant,

"RICHARD PIPPIN.' Scorrier took possession of it. He dimly understood that with those last words a wire had snapped. The border-line had been overpassed; the point reached where that sense of proportion, which alone makes life possible, is lost. He was certain that at the moment of his death Pippin could have discussed bimetallism, or any intellectual problem, except the one problem of his own heart; that, for some mysterious reason, had been too much for him. His death had been the work of a moment of supreme revolt a single instant of madness on a single subject!

He found on the blotting-paper, scrawled across the impress of the signature, 'Can't stand it!'

The completion of that letter had been to him a struggle ungraspable by Scorrier. Slavery? defeat? a violation of Nature? the death of justice? It was better not to think of it! Pippin could have told, but he would never speak again. Nature, at whom, unaided, he had dealt so many blows, had taken her revenge!

In the night Scorrier stole down, and, with an ashamed face, cut off a lock of the fine gray hair.

He waited till Pippin was buried, then, with the letter in his pocket, started for England.

He arrived at Liverpool on a Thursday morning, and traveling to town, drove straight to the office of the company. The Board was sitting. Pippin's successor was already being interviewed. He passed out as Scorrier came in, a middle-aged man with a large, red beard, and a foxy, compromising face. He also was a Cornishman. Scorrier wished him luck with a heavy heart.

As an unsentimental man, who had a proper horror of emotion, whose living depended on his good sense, to look back on that interview with the Board was painful. It had excited in him a rage of which he was now heartily ashamed. Old Jolyon Forsyte, the chairman, was not there for once, guessing perhaps that the Board's view of this death would be too small for him; and little Mr. Booker sat in his place. Every one had risen, shaken hands with Scorrier, and expressed himself indebted for his coming. Scorrier placed Pippin's letter on the table, and gravely the secretary read out to his Board the last words of their superintendent. When he had finished, a director said, "That's not the letter of a madman!'

Another answered, 'Mad as a hatter; nobody but a madman would have thrown up such a post.'

Scorrier suddenly withdrew, and left them to discuss the question of sanity. He heard Hemmings calling after him: 'Are n't you well, Mr. Scorrier? are n't you well, sir?'

He shouted back, 'Quite sane, I thank you.'

note to his memories.

THE story of Realmah, by Sir Arthur Helps, contains a description of a so-called 'House of Wisdom.' This was the dwelling-place of a number of prophets, who possessed differing degrees of prophetic power, lived upon fees, and had incomes varying with the number of their clients. In an outer inclosure two men were living in the deepest poverty. They were called 'Spoolans,' and were contemptuously treated and almost never consulted, since their special gift consisted in predicting events that would occur a hundred or more years in the future. In the next inclosure there were men who were only a shade less miserable. They were the 'Raths,' and had few clients, because they could foretell only what would occur after a lapse of twentyseven years. In another and better apartment there were five 'Uraths,' who could tell what would happen after a single year should elapse; and these men were in good spirits, handsomely dressed, and evidently well off; while the 'Auraths,' who could prophesy what would happen after a month, had a superabundance of clients and of fees. Vastly wealthy were the 'Mauraths,' who could foretell what would happen after three days; but the multi-millionaire of the company was the great 'Amaurath,' who was approached with the awe with which a servant might have approached Sardanapalus, for this man could foresee what would occur after six hours.

This description applies to a common mental attitude toward the future. In

telligence does indeed modify it, and the man of property who is providing for his descendants is by no means on a plane in respect of forethought with a happy-go-lucky southern Negro. The founder of an estate would have need of the services of the most far-seeing class in the House of Wisdom; but the average man would pass by, or at most, in a leisure moment, satisfy curiosity at the cost of a trifling tip. The Amauraths and their great chief would get the rich fees.

If we judge by appearances it seems that states come in the same category; and it is certainly true that a people in its entirety will often act more blindly than a select class would ever do in a private capacity. Yet there is every reason why a state should make use of forethought. A century is as nothing in its life; and yet how many acts do legislatures, congresses, and parliaments pass for the benefit of coming ages? In all that concerns those periods, the national consciousness is dull. Representatives are allowed to take short views and, in their capacity as politicians, are compelled to use their efforts in ways that afford quick results. Where an act insures a benefit that will begin at once and continue forever, the continuance does not tell against it, but counts somewhat in its favor, and more and more, it is fair to say, the nearer part of the endless future counts as a make-weight; but the real test comes when it is necessary to sacrifice something now in order to gain something hereafter. When an economic