coming out
here----'

"He stopped again.

"'You must not tire yourself so,' said Jack.

"'What does it matter? I can die so much more easily if I leave things
clear--for, trifling as they are, my poor mother's comfort depends on
them. And I am so glad too for you to understand about me, Berkeley. That
day--it went to my heart to have to refuse you about the subscription for
the fireworks.'

"'Don't speak of it. I know you had some good motive,' said Jack.

"'Necessity--sheer, hard necessity,' said poor Sawyer. 'The money I had
got that morning was only just in time to save my younger brother from
life-long disgrace, perhaps imprisonment.'

"Then painfully--in short and broken sentences--he related to Jack
the history of his hard, sad, but heroic life. _He_ did not think it
heroic--it seemed to him, in his single-minded conscientiousness, that
he had done no more than his duty, and that but imperfectly. He had given
his life for others, and, hardest of all, for others who had little
appreciated his devotion.

"'My father died when I was only about twelve,' he said. 'He had been a
clergyman, but his health failed, and he had to leave England and take a
small charge in Switzerland. There he met my mother--a Swiss, and there I
was partly brought up. When he died he told me I must take his place as
head of the family. I was not so attractive as my brother and sister; I
was shy and reserved. Naturally my mother cared most for them. I fear she
was too indulgent. My sister married badly, and I had to try to help her.
My poor brother, he was always in trouble and yet he meant well----'

"And so he told Jack the whole melancholy history, entering into details
which I have forgotten, and which, even if I remembered them, it would be
only painful to relate. His brother was now in America--doing well he
hoped, thanks of course to him; his sister's circumstances too had
improved. For the first time in his life Sawyer had begun to feel his
burdens lessening, when he was brought face to face with the knowledge
that all in this world was over for him. Uncomplainingly he had, through
all these long years, borne the heat and burden of the day; rest for him
was to be elsewhere, not here. But as he had met life, so he now met
death--calmly and unrepiningly, certain that hard as it had been hard as
it seemed now, it must yet be for the best--the solving of the riddle he
left to God.

"And his last thought was for others--for the