could use the pickaxe of the gold-digger, or wash the rubble for the
precious ore. Ah, it was a wild, a fatal delusion! Many a gentleman
and scholar pined to death with hardships and disappointments, while
some, after weeks of sickness, rose to earn their bread by the
humblest manual labor. Working on the roads, for which government pay
was given, was often the resource of those who had been worsted in
every other effort. Unable to help among such numbers of claimants on
sympathy, Sidney had contented himself with joining in the
subscriptions raised for the relief of the sick and destitute: but
now, as he passed along, he felt a desire to speak to the workers in
this gang. As his eye scanned them he saw only a group of thin,
toil-worn, weather-beaten men, with rough beards half hiding their
wasted features. Nothing was more acceptable, as a recreation to the
emigrants, than books, and Sidney had commenced a lending library of
books and publications; so, after a cheerful salutation, he now reined
up his horse, and began to tell them of his plan, and to add, "I have
opened a room, friends, two nights a week,--it is but a rough shed,
but I hope to make it better soon,--as a meeting-place, where a
comfortable, pleasant, and profitable evening may be spent."

"Then," said a man with a strong Irish brogue, "your honor's the great
Dutch merchant."

"Yes, at the Dutch merchant's store; but I am English; my name is
Sidney--"

There was a wild panting sort of cry, and a man in the group fell to
the ground.

"He's in a fit." "He oughtn't to have come." "Poor fellow!" "Fetch
water!" "Give him air!" These were the cries that were uttered.
Meanwhile, throwing his horse's bridle over a post, Sidney dismounted,
and helped to lift in his strong arms the tall but wasted form of a
man from the ground. He was borne to a bank at the side of the road.
Sidney put aside the matted hair that fell over his brow, and taking
the pannikin, which some one had filled with water, he put it to his
lips, wholly unconscious that he had ever seen that face before, until
the eyes slowly opened, and the old expression, the soul-gaze, shone
in them, and the hoarse and altered voice, yet with tones that woke
old echoes, said, "Sidney! Dear friend! Don't--don't you know
me--Walter?"

Walter! Yes it was he. The once blooming, prosperous, happy boy was
this wasted, worn skeleton of a man. O, the tide of feeling that
rushed through Sidney's every vein, as