would he
say? What would be his last words to them? They were these:

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept
the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness."

In coughless silence, with those listening eyes fixed upon him, the
vicar began his discourse, making a brave attempt to preserve his
outward calm. He dwelt upon the career of St. Paul; followed him in his
wanderings, his perils of waters, his perils in the wilderness, and many
trials and sufferings through which he had passed. And now, in a dungeon
at Rome, with a cruel death awaiting him, as he looked back on it all
the triumphant note broke from him: "I have fought the good fight."

From that the vicar turned to the career of another: a great poet, one
who had all the world could offer, and who had drunk so deeply of the
pleasures of life that his soul was satiated with them--Lord Byron. And
when at the last, a stranger in a strange land, away from friends and
kindred, he took up his pen to write, the last words which he gave to
the world were these:

"My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!"

The vicar paused; and then, with simple, touching earnestness, added:

"Which, my brethren will be yours at the last--'the worm, the canker,
and the grief,' or the crown of righteousness that fadeth not away?"

Eyes were moist, and hearts throbbed unusually among the simple-minded
village folk as they filed out, but little was said; they felt they had
been assisting at one of the solemn mysteries of the church, and no
dubious composition, no grandiloquence of the vicar's came between them
and the heart-cry of the old man.

Edward John broke the silence in which his little group walked homeward
by saying: "There's a deal of truth in what the vicar said about
_vanitas vanitatium_, 'Enry. Seems to me there ain't nothing much worth
having in this world unless we're keepin' in mind the world that is to
come."

"That is so, father," Henry assented shortly; for his mind was full of
new and comforting thoughts, and his heart suffused with a tenderness he
could not speak.

A great love for his father had been budding steadily when he fancied
most it was withering, and it had burst almost at once into full bloom.
To Mr. Needham also his point of view was suddenly and for ever changed.

Both his