our
powers. I offer you a field hitherto untilled, left to the wandering
winds and the birds of the air, extensive enough in its forlorn iniquity,
I assure you, to engage your patient and continued efforts. It may prove
productive of good results yet, who knows? Is it my fault that I didn't
know you sooner?"

I did not mistake the change in Mr. Rollin's tone, nor the meaning in his
eyes, but as we stood there by the window, in the full moonlight, I
caught a glimpse of another face outside, vanishing up the lane--almost
like a ghostly apparition it seemed to me--the handsome pale young face.
I guessed instinctively whose it was, and suffered a pang of sharp,
unconfessed pain, while the fisherman was murmuring in my ear.

"Don't speak to me again of missions!" I cried with the strong and tragic
air of consciously blighted aspirations. "I shall go on no more missions,
great or small. It is very true what you have tried so delicately to
intimate. I was not fit for the work I undertook to do. I have only made
mistakes all the way along. Possibly I have been only 'playing a part.'
What does it amount to, indeed! What does it amount to!"

"Heavens!" said Mr. Rollin; "play a part, by all means; never be sincere
in anything you do. I never tried it but once, and I've made a desperate
mess of it. Can't you understand that what I said was only in the purest
sort of self-defence? You weigh my words so nicely. Well, you are
considerate enough, God knows, of those dirty brats and ignorant
louts--coddling that girl, Rebecca, who is a good-hearted creature
enough, but not fit for respectable people to touch their hands to; and
associating with such conceited boors as that George Olver, and that
grinning clown, Harvey, and that poor fool, Lovell Barlow, and that
what-d'ye-call him--that fiddling young devil with the bird-like
name----"

Mr. Rollin stopped suddenly.

"You might make allowances for a man in a passion," he said; "instead of
dissecting his words in that cold-blooded way."

"I had no notion of dissecting your words," I said, provoked into a
desperate honesty; "I believe them, as a whole, to be utterly false."

"From the very beginning," said Mr. Rollin; "thank you; so I can begin
all over again; meanwhile,--you will forgive me? Imagine that I'm one of
those dirty little beggars that go to school to you. If one of them
should come to you and say that he was sorry?--"

"I should only be intensely surprised," I said; "