I am well--as well as a man of my age can expect to be, save for a troublesome heart-weakness, which threatens a brief and easy ending to my career.

But for this, I should esteem myself stronger than some men who are still young.

And one of the strongest feelings in me at the present moment (apart altogether from the deep affection and devout gratitude I have towards the one who under my Will is to inherit all I have spent my life to gain) is my friendship for you, my dear Vesey,--a friendship cemented by the experience of years, and which I trust may always be unbroken, even remaining in your mind as an unspoilt memory after I am gone where all who are weary, long, yet fear to go! Nevertheless, my faith is firm that the seeming darkness of death will prove but the veil which hides the light of a more perfect life, and I have learned, through the purity of a great and unselfish human love, to believe in the truth of the Love Divine .-- Your friend always, DAVID HELMSLEY." This letter finished, he went out and posted it with all the others he had written, and then passed the evening in listening to the organist practising grave anthems and voluntaries in the Cathedral.

Every little item he could think of in his business affairs was carefully gone over during the three days he spent in Exeter,--nothing was left undone that could be so arranged as to leave his worldly concerns in perfect and unquestionable order--and when, as "Mr.David," he paid his last daily score at the little Temperance hotel where he had stayed since the Tuesday night, and started by the early train of Saturday morning on his return to Minehead, he was at peace with himself and all men.

True it was that the making of his will had brought home to him the fact that it was not the same thing as when, being in the prime of life, he had made it in favour of his two sons, who were now dead,--it was really and truly a final winding-up of his temporal interests, and an admitted approach to the verge of the Eternal,--but he was not depressed by this consciousness.