ch a night as this when Mr. Menteith
died, before I went to Edinburg? The sort of wind that, they say, is
always sent to call away souls. I know not why it is, or why there
should be any connection between things material and immaterial,
comprehensible and wholly incomprehensible, but I often sit here and
fancy I should like my soul to be called away in just such a tempest as
this--to be set free,

"'And on the wings of mighty winds
Go flying all abroad,'

"As the psalm has it. It would be glorious--glorious! Suddenly to
find one's self strong, active--cumbered with no burden of a body--
to be all spirit, and spirit only."

As the earl spoke, his whole face, withered and worn as it was, lighted
up and glowed, Helen thought, almost like what one could imagine a
disembodied soul.

She answered nothing, for she could find nothing to say. Her quiet,
simple faith was almost frightened at the passionate intensity of his,
and the nearness with which he seemed to realize the unseen world.

"I wonder," he said again--"I sometimes sit for hours wondering--
what the other life is like--the life of which we know nothing, yet
which may be so near to us all. I often find myself planning about it
in a wild, vague way, what I am to do in it--what God will permit me
to do--and to be. Surely something more than He ever permitted here."

"I believe that," said Helen. And after her habit of bringing all
things to the one test and the one teaching, she reminded him of the
parable of the talents: "I think," she added, "that you will be one of
those whom, in requital for having made the most of all his gifts here,
He will make 'ruler over ten cities' at least, if he is a just God."

"He is a just God. In my worst trials I have never doubted that,"
replied Lord Cairnforth, solemnly. And then he repeated those words of
St. Paul, to which many an agonized doubter has clung, as being the last
refuge of sorrow--the only key to mysteries which sometime shake the
firmest faith--"'For now we see through a glass darkly, but then
face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I
am known.'"

When Helen rose to retire, which was not till midnight--for the earl
seemed unwilling to let her go, saying it was so long since they had had
a quiet talk together--he asked her earnestly if she were content
about her son.

"Perfectly content. Not merely content, but happy--happier than I
once thought it possible to