natural,
except you! What is the matter with me?--what is the matter with me?"

Helwyse sat with both hands twisted in his mighty beard, and one
booted leg thrown over the other. He was full of sympathy at the
spectacle of poor Amos MacGentle, blindly groping after the phantom of
a flower whose bloom and fragrance had vanished so terribly long ago;
and yet, for some reason or other he could hardly forbear a smile.
When anything is utterly out of place, it is no more pathetic than
absurd; moreover, young men are always secretly inclined to laugh at
old ones!

"Why should not Glyphic be alive?" resumed Mr. MacGentle. "Why not he,
as well as you or I? Aren't we all about of an age?"

Helwyse drew his chair close to his companion's, and took his hand, as
if it had been a young girl's. "My dear friend," said he, "you said
you felt tired this morning, but you forget how far you've travelled
since we last met. Doctor Glyphic, if he be living now, must be more
than sixty years old. Your dream of old age was such as many have
dreamed before, and not awakened from in this world!"

"Let me think!--let me think!" said the old man; and, Helwyse drawing
back, there ensued a silence, varied only by a long and tremulous sigh
from his companion; whether of relief or dejection, the visitor could
not decide. But when Mr. MacGentle spoke, it was with more assurance.
Either from mortification at his illusion, or more probably from
imperfect perception of it, he made no reference to what had passed.
Old age possesses a kind of composure, arising from dulled
sensibilities, which the most self-possessed youth can never rival.

"We heard, through the London branch of our house, that Thor Helwyse
died some two years ago."

"He was drowned in the Baltic Sea. I am his son Balder."

"He was my friend," observed the old man, simply; but the tone he used
was a magnet to attract the son's heart. "You look very much like him,
only his eyes were blue, and yours, as I now see, are dark; but you
might be mistaken for him."

"I sometimes have been," rejoined Balder, with a half-smile.

"And you are his son! You are most welcome!" said Mr. MacGentle, with
old-fashioned courtesy.

"Forgive me if I have--if anything has occurred to annoy you. I am a
very old man, Mr. Balder; so old that sometimes I believe I forget how
old I am! And Thor is dead,--drowned,--you say?"

"The Baltic, you know, has been the grave of many of our forefathers;
I think