sented also the
interest of Grahame Kirkbright, his uncle, third partner; had
inherited, besides, half of his estate; the other half had come to
our friend at home, his sister, Miss Euphrasia.

"I had no right to stay out there any longer, making my tools;
multiplying them, without definite purpose. It was time to put them
to their use; and I have come home to find it. A man may take till
thirty-one to get ready, mayn't he, Mr. Vireo?"

"The man who took up the work of the world's salvation, began to be
about thirty years of age when he came forth to public ministry,"
returned Mr. Vireo.

"I never thought of that before. I wonder I never did. It has come
home to me, in many other parts of that Life, how full it is of
scarcely recognized analogy to prevailing human experience. That
'driving into the Wilderness!' What an inevitable interval it is
between the realizing of a special power and the finding out of its
special purpose! I am in the Wilderness,--or was,--Vireo; but I knew
my way lay through it. I have been pausing--thinking--striving to
know. The temptations may not have been wanting, altogether, either.
There are so many things one can do easily; considering one's self,
largely, in the plan. My whole life has waited, in some chief
respects, till the end of these ten pledged years. What was I to do
with it? Where was I to look for, and find most speedily, all that a
man begins to feel the desire to establish for himself at thirty
years old? Home, society, sphere; I can tell you it is a strange
feeling to take one's fortune in one's hand and come forth from such
a business exile, and choose where one will make the first
link,--decide the first condition, which may draw after all the
rest. Happily, I had my sister to come home to; and I had the
remembrance of the little story my mother told me--about my name. I
think she looked forward for the boy who could know so little then
of the destiny partly laid out for him already."

"About your name?" reminded Mr. Vireo. He always liked to hear the
whole of a thing; especially a thing that touched and influenced
spiritually.

"Yes. The story of Saint Cristofero. The strong man, Offero, who
would serve the strongest; who served a great king, till he learned
that the king feared Satan; who then sought Satan and served him,
till he found that Satan feared the Cross; who sought for Jesus,
then, that he might serve Him, and found a hermit who bade him fast
and pray. Bu