ing from it moved slowly down the city, passed the
door of his old home without looking at it, and went out of the city
gates.

After that he was seen in every city in Europe at different
intervals. Charitable people gave him alms, but he never begged. He
would enter a town, take his station near a church and wait until
the bells rang for matins or vespers, then take up his staff and,
sighing deeply, move off. People noting the wistful look in his eyes
would ask him what he wanted.

"I am seeking,--I am seeking," was his only reply; and those were
almost the only words any one ever heard from him, and he muttered
them often to himself. Years rolled over the head of the wanderer,
but still his slow march from town to town continued. His hair had
grown white, and his strength had failed him so much that he only
tottered instead of walked, but still that wistful seeking look was
in his eyes.

He heard the old bells on the Rhine in his wanderings. He lingered
long near the belfries of the sweetest voices; but their melodious
tongues only spoke to him of his lost hope.

He left the river of sweet bells, and made a pilgrimage to England.
It was the days of cathedrals in their beauty and glory, and here he
again heard the tones that he loved, but which failed to realize his
own ideal.

When a person fails to fulfil his ideal, his whole life seems a
failure,--like something glorious and beautiful one meets and loses,
and never again finds.

"Be true to the dreams of thy youth," says a German author; and
every soul is unhappy until the dreams of youth prove true.

One glorious evening in midsummer Otto was crossing a river in
Ireland. The kind-hearted boatman had been moved by the old man's
imploring gestures to cross him. "He's mighty nigh his end, anyhow,"
he muttered, looking at the feeble movements of the old pilgrim as
he stumbled to his seat.

Suddenly through the still evening air came the distant sound of a
melodious chime. At the first note the pilgrim leaped to his feet
and threw up his arms.

"O my God," he cried, "found at last!"

"It's the bells of the Convent," said the wondering man, not
understanding Otto's words spoken in a foreign tongue, but answering
his gesture. "They was brought from somewhere in Holland when they
were fighting there. Moighty fine bells they are, anyhow. But he
isn't listening to me."

No, he