for the sight of Him will be enough, and you will care
to think of nothing else."

"And you are sure He will accept me, after all?" asked the sick girl,
opening her eyes, and looking up at Grace. She saw Thurnall standing
in the doorway, and gave a little scream.

Tom came forward, bowing. "I am very sorry to have disturbed you. I
suspect Miss Harvey was giving you better medicine than I can give."

Now why did Tom say that, to whom the legend of St. Dorothea, and,
indeed, that whole belief in a better land, was as a dream fit only
for girls?

Not altogether because he must need say something civil. True, he
felt, on the whole, about the future state as Goethe did--"To the able
man this world is not dumb: why should he ramble off into eternity?
Such incomprehensible subjects lie too far off, and only disturb our
thoughts, if made the subject of daily meditation." That there was a
future state he had no doubt. Our having been born once, he used to
say, is the strongest possible presumption in favour of our being born
again; and probably, as nature always works upward and develops higher
forms, in some higher state. Indeed, for aught he knew, the old
ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs might be alive now, as lions--or as
men. He himself, indeed, he had said, ere now, had been probably a
pterodactyle of the Lias, neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring,
but crocodile and bat in one, able alike to swim, or run, or fly, eat
anything, and live in any element. Still it was no concern of his. He
was here; and here was his business. He had not thought of this life
before he came into it; and it would be time enough to think of the
next life when he got into it. Besides, he had all a doctor's dislike
of those terrors of the unseen world, with which some men are wont to
oppress still more failing nature, and break the bruised reed. His
business was to cure his patients' bodies; and if he could not do
that, at least to see that life was not shortened in them by nervous
depression and anxiety. Accustomed to see men of every character die
under every possible circumstance, he had come to the conclusion that
the "safety of a man's soul" could by no possibility be inferred from
his death-bed temper. The vast majority, good or bad, died in peace:
why not let them die so? If nature kindly took off the edge of sorrow,
by blunting the nervous system, what right had man to interfere with
so merciful an arrangement? Every man, he held in his