Trenholme knew, without more ado, that Bates loved the lost girl, that it was her loss that outweighed all other misfortune.

He felt a great compassion: he said impatiently: "There's no use trying to interfere between brothers.

You can't see the thing as I see it.

Let's leave it." "Ay, leave it," cried the other, voice and limb shaking, "and life is short, and the time to die is every time, and if some accident is to sweep us away to-night, who's to tell him that your death, and your soul too, isn't on his head ?" "Bother my soul!" said Alec; and yet there was a certain courtesy expressed in the gentler tone in which he spoke, and what he thought was, "How much he must have loved her!" When the fog had vanished, leaving daylight absolute, this scene of the morning seemed like a dream, and in the evening, as much from curiosity to see if he could revive its essence again as from a friendly desire to relieve the overcharged heart of his comrade, he said: "Tell me about her, Bates.

What was she like ?" Bates responded to the question like a man whose heart is beating against the walls of his silence as a bird beats upon its cage.