of alarmed anxiety.

The baronet's hand had been thrust into his breast-pocket, as he spoke.
He took out a letter and handing it to Ralph, groaned out the two words:

"Read that!"

Ralph caught his breath as his eyes took in the first lines: "Dear
Uncle, by the time you receive this, I shall be beyond _this_ life,
though _where_--in that outer world, that world beyond--I can--not
tell."

Ralph had not turned to the signature, he knew the writing too well,
and knew it for bright, happy jocund George Carlyon's. He read on:

"All that has happened in the world, of late, has driven me mad. Dear
old Tom Hammond wrote me fully of his change of heart, and besought me
to face the whole matter of my 'eternal destiny,' as he termed it. I
simply did not reply to his letter. Three days later he was taken,
with all those others, to God. Since then I have plunged into
everything trying to drown thought, and remorse, but I cannot, so I am
ending all--there's a mad thing to say, as if death could end all.
Though I do not doubt but what many other fellows will do what I am
doing now. Good bye, good old Hunky Archie,

"Your unhappy, rotten,
"GEORGE."

As Ralph lifted his eyes from the paper he found Sir Archibald's fixed
upon him, and the anguish in the poor old dull eyes drew tears to
Ralph's.

"We found him," cried the old man, "in the boathouse, by the lake, with
a bullet through his temples. My poor boy! My noble boy!"

Dry-eyes, but with a soul full of anguish, his features, too, twisted
with the anguish of his soul, the old man rocked himself for a moment
in his chair.

Looking up suddenly, he startled Ralph by the bitterness of his tones,
as he said:

"God forgive me! But I could find it easy to curse our clergy, our
ministers, our bishops, our teachers, for that when we looked to them,
and _paid_ them, to tell us the right, the true thing, they let us go
on deluded by the belief that attendance upon the _outward form_ was
sufficient to make us sure of Heaven in the future. Why, Bastin, good
fellow, do you know that more than half of the clergymen with whom I
was _well_ acquainted, are among those whom God has left behind, and
not one of those whom I know, thus left, has a mite of concern about
their state, but seem to have gone right over to the Devil, if I may so
say it. What does it all mean?"

Ralph began to speak kindly, sympathetically to him, but the old man
suddenly interrupted with: