known evils,
dizzily taking the chances of desperate occupations. And the courage is
the greater, because, finally, in this world, love alone has anything to
lose. Other losses may be more or less repaired; but love's loss is, of
its essence, irreparable. Other fair faces and brave hearts the world
may bring us, but never that one face! Alas! for the most precious of
earthly things, the only precious thing of earth, there is no system of
insurance. The many waters have quenched love, and the floods drowned
it,--yet in the wide world is there no help, no hope, no recompense.

The love that bound this little circle of young people together was so
strong and warm that it had developed in them an almost painful
sensibility to such risks of loss. So it was that expressions of
affection and outward endearments were more current among them than is
usual in a land where manners, from a proper fear of exaggeration, run
to a silly extreme of unresponsiveness. They never met without showing
their joy to be again together; never parted without that inner fear
that this might be their last chance of showing their love for
each other.

"You all say good-bye as if you were going to America!" Myrtilla
Williamson had once said; "I suppose it's your Irish grandmother." And
no doubt the _empressement_ had its odd side for those who saw only
the surface.

Thus for those who love love, who love to watch for it on human faces,
Mike's good-bye at the railway station was a sight worth going far
to see.

"My word, they seem to be fond of each other, these young people!" said
a lady standing at the door of the next carriage.

Mike was leaning through the window, and Esther was pressing near to
him. They murmured low to each other, and their eyes were bright with
tears. A little apart stood a small group, in which Henry and Angel and
Ned were conspicuous, and Mike's sisters and Dot and Mat were there. A
callous observer might have laughed, so sad and solemn they were. Mike's
fun tried a rally; but his jests fell spiritless. It was not so much a
parting, one might have thought, as a funeral. Little was said, but eyes
were eloquent, either with tears, or with long strong glances that meant
undying faithfulness all round; and Mike knew that Henry's eyes were
quoting "_Allons_! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!"

Henry's will to achieve was too strong for him to think of this as a
parting; he could only think of it as a glorio