The tiny "Charlie," meanwhile, sitting on the hearth in a vigilantly erect attitude, with quivering nose pointed in a creamward direction, waited for the approach of the expected afternoon refreshment, trembling from head to tail with nervous excitement.

And Helmsley, left alone for those few moments, presently mastered the strong emotion which made him long to tell his true history to the two sincere souls who, out of his whole life's experience, had alone proved themselves faithful to the spirit of a friendship wherein the claims of cash had no part.

Regaining full command of himself, and determining to act out the part he had elected to play to whatever end should most fittingly arrive,--an end he could not as yet foresee,--he sat quietly in his chair as usual, gazing into the fire with the meditative patience and calm of old age, and silently building up in a waking dream the last story of his House of Love,--which now promised to be like that house spoken of in the Divine Parable--"And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock." For as he knew,--and as we all must surely know,--the greatest rains and floods and winds of a world of sorrow, are powerless to destroy love, if love be true..