ust a visitation of God, as they tell me. Sure I
don't know why. There never was a better little lad, and clever, too,
when he's not in pain. Draws wonderfully."

The storm had passed. He grew quieter in her arms, and when I had
promised to come again and bring him a new picture-book, a little
grateful smile flickered across the drawn face, but he would not talk.

I kept in touch with him. Mere curiosity would have made me do that.
He grew more normal as the years went by, and gradually the fancy that
had come to me at our first meeting faded farther into the background.
Sometimes, using the very language of the dead man's letter, I would
talk to him, wondering if by any chance some flash of memory would come
back to him, and once or twice it seemed to me that into the mild,
pathetic eyes there came a look that I had seen before, but it passed
away, and indeed, it was difficult to think of this sad little human
oddity, with its pleading helplessness, in connection with the strong,
swift, conquering spirit that I had watched passing away amid the
silence of the mountains.

The one thing that brought joy to him was his art. I cannot help
thinking that, but for his health, he would have made a name for
himself. His work was always clever and original, but it was the work
of an invalid.

"I shall never be great," he said to me once. "I have such wonderful
dreams, but when it comes to working them out there is something that
hampers me. It always seems to me as if at the last moment a hand was
stretched out that clutched me by the feet. I long so, but I have not
the strength. It is terrible to be one of the weaklings."

It clung to me, that word he had used. For a man to know he is weak;
it sounds a paradox, but a man must be strong to know that. And
dwelling upon this, and upon his patience and his gentleness, there
came to me suddenly remembrance of that postscript, the significance of
which I had not understood.

He was a young man of about three- or four-and-twenty at the time. His
father had died, and he was living in poor lodgings in the south of
London, supporting himself and his mother by strenuous, ill-paid work.

"I want you to come with me for a few days' holiday," I told him.

I had some difficulty in getting him to accept my help, for he was very
proud in his sensitive, apologetic way. But I succeeded eventually,
persuading him it would be good for his work. Physically the journey
must have