e--by what strange charm did he still control and confuse my
reason? And how was it that I felt myself murmuring, again and again,
"But what, after all, if his hope be no chimera, and if Nature do hide a
secret by which I could save the life of my beloved Lilian?"

And again and again, as that thought would force itself on me, I rose
and crept to Lilian's threshold, listening to catch the faintest sound
of her breathing. All still, all dark! In that sufferer recognized
science detects no mortal disease, yet dares not bid me rely on its
amplest resources of skill to turn aside from her slumber the stealthy
advance of death; while in yon log-hut one whose malady recognized
science could not doubt to be mortal has composed himself to sleep,
confident of life! Recognized science?--recognized ignorance! The
science of to-day is the ignorance of to-morrow! Every year some bold
guess lights up a truth to which, but the year before, the schoolmen of
science were as blinded as moles.

"What, then," my lips kept repeating,--"what if Nature do hide a secret
by which the life of my life can be saved? What do we know of the
secrets of Nature? What said Newton himself of his knowledge? 'I am like
a child picking up pebbles and shells on the sand, while the great ocean
of Truth lies all undiscovered around me!' And did Newton himself, in
the ripest growth of his matchless intellect, hold the creed of the
alchemists in scorn? Had he not given to one object of their research,
in the transmutation of metals, his days and his nights? Is there proof
that he ever convinced himself that the research was the dream, which
we, who are not Newtons, call it?(1) And that other great sage, inferior
only to Newton--the calculating doubt-weigher, Descartes--had he not
believed in the yet nobler hope of the alchemists,--believed in some
occult nostrum or process by which human life could attain to the age of
the Patriarchs?"(2)

In thoughts like these the night wore away, the moonbeams that streamed
through my window lighting up the spacious solitudes beyond,--mead and
creek, forest-land, mountaintop,--and the silence without broken by
the wild cry of the night hawk and the sibilant melancholy dirge of
the shining chrysococyx,(3)--bird that never sings but at night, and
obstinately haunts the roofs of the sick and dying, ominous of woe and
death.

But up sprang the sun, and, chasing these gloomy sounds, out burst the
wonderful chorus of Australian