w exhausted all Nature's remedies, save one--Drink, and he
could not drink. Drink has often rescued men, in straits of mental
prostration, from the charcoal-pan, the pistol, and the river. But
Mike could not drink, and Nature sought in vain to re-adjust again,
and balance anew, forces which seemed now irretrievably disarranged.
All the old agencies were exhausted, and the new force, which chance,
co-operating with natural disposition, had introduced, was dominant
in him. Against it women were now powerless, and he turned aside from
offered love.

It is probable that the indirect influences to which we have been
subjected before birth outweigh the few direct influences received by
contagion with present life. But the direct influences, slight as
they may be, are worth considering, they being the only ones of which
we have any exact knowledge, even if in so doing we exaggerate them;
and in striving to arrive at a just estimation of the forces that had
brought about his present mind, Mike was in the habit of giving
prominence to the thought of the demoralizing influence of the
introduction of Eastern pessimism into a distinctly Western nature.
He remembered very well indeed the shock he had received when he had
heard John say for the first time that it was better that human life
should cease.

"For man's history, what is it but the history of crime? Man's life,
what is it but a disgraceful episode in the life of one of the
meanest of the planets? Let us be thankful that time shall obliterate
the abominable, and that once again the world shall roll pure through
the silence of the universe."

So John had once spoken, creating consternation in Mike's soul,
casting poison upon it. But John had buried himself in Catholicism
for refuge from this awful creed, leaving Mike to perish in it. Then
Mike wondered if he should have lived and died a simple, honourable,
God-fearing man, if he had not been taken out of the life he was born
in, if he had married in Ireland, for instance, and driven cattle to
market, as did his ancestors.

One day hearing the organ singing a sweet anthem, he stayed to
listen. It being midsummer, the doors of the church were open, the
window was in his view, and the congregation came streaming out into
the sunshine of the courts, some straying hither and thither, taking
note of the various monuments. In such occupation he spoke to one
whom he recognized at once as a respectable shop-girl. He took her
ou