SHORT STORIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3292, 18 April 1917, Page 57

SHORT STORIES.

THE GARDEN OF MEMORY.

By E. M. Story

It was in the half-lights, and my spirit moved in Memory's Garden. The beams of Love's light glanced on the petals of my favourite flowers, and touched them to a rare beauty. Their fragrance expressed an atmosphere of ineffable peace. Their delicacy of outline was too perfect from the angles at which I saw them to permit me to invite even my nearest and dearest friend to gaze on it, as the slightest divergence in position would impair the vision. By such a " light as never was on sea or land" I saw my flowers, my rare choice blossoms, which had opened their buds to me in untold adversities, and had tinted my dull, drab days with immortal colours, invisible to any but my individual self. Finer than threads of spun gossamer was the texture of the petals that shyly bloomed in my Garden of Memory, watered by tranquil reflection. There was a slight flicker of light and shadow on the tallest, brightest flower, perceptible to me as I watched it, and the shadow depth sufficed to evoke the soul of a tear for a- scintillating second; but it passed as the light illumined the shadow. The cicalse were desperate in the native bush, in one of the most beautiful of New Zealand parks, and the tui was cheerfully extracting the honey from the flax, the thrush and the blackbird were calling to their mates, and the mantle of midsummer flory was spread over grass and tree and ower. The joy of Life rose steadily in Time's goblet, and the ends of the earth as knotted up in great cities seemed as remote as the Diplodicus from William Russell Rawson, as he deposited the woven basket containing his luncheon beneath the wide-stretching boughs of a Pinus insignis. "If I don't enjoy myself to-day I'll never take another holiday," he said. "Never!" He removed his hat, and then he stretched his whole length on the ground, crossed his hands beneath his head, and turned his face skywards. The giant pinus was laden with cones, that suggested, as he looked up at the branches, myriads of brown birds perched on the boughs, all waiting for the baton of an impossible conductor to burst into song. "But this is life," said the holidaymaker, " such life as I've seen in my day dreams." Then he became part of the great roar-in-stillness of the bush. He closed his eyes and listened, and it seemed to him as though he had a hundred ears, and could hear a thousand sounds at once, all distinct vet all part of one symphony—that of the forest. A multitude of selves, all part of his one self, answered to the bush calls. For an hour Rawson lay there living intensely. He was a pinecone, just ready to make the great adventure of dropping from the height where it had first burst forth . and , later matured, on to the unknown ground: he was a kie-kie in the bole of a tree, sharing its vast life and scorning a meagre independence; he was a tui, tuning his flute and telling of the honey-sweets; a puriri tree, laughing at centuries, and in possession of the island long before Maoris or Morioris crossed the seas in their giant canoes; he was the black swan on the lake, "honking" a determination to oust the white swan; he was a duckling, watching his mother as she pushed her thick bill into the very heart of a water-lily to extract the insects that were fretting it; he was a tree-fern, stretching out fronds at the height of thirty feet above his root; he was a kiwi, and had no need to search for his foodit was so plentiful that it dropped into his mouth; then he tried to fly, but his poor unpractised wings had shrunken, and he could only walk;' he was a "Christmas tree," and his crimson flow«rs drew great praise from passing strangers: he was a water rat, with the snuggest' home near the lake, but so carefully hidden that the oldest duck could not discover it: he was a scarlet fish, irradiated by' golden gleams, and he darted hitherto and thither in the transparency or rested on the bottom of the shallow waters; he was a disappointed pod, ripped open by a humble bee arid suffering in tortured silence; he was the light that found its way through varying densities, and played on the rippling surface of the silver waters: he was a little piece of vellow fluff listening to the loud, persistent" voice of his tremendous mother as she quacked her instructions that he should swim straight in the direction she indicated (his self-will got him entangled in the weed>i on the border, and he nearly choked with fright as he heard some dry leaves near him rustle): he was a rose "petal, wafted on the zephyr; a whole rose, the heart of a rose, yearning with passionate intenstiy for he scarce knew what. He sat up, looked at his watch it had never appeared to him such a tyrannical machine before He replaced it in his pocket, and stood upon his feet, "Eh, but that was an hour," he said.

"What a world! What a world!" He raiser! his luncheon basket, peeped into it. closed the lid again, and walked on. Suddenly he arrested his walk, and stooped, and bent, this wav and that, for between the branches of the firs he saw in the distance a wondrous sight—that of a huge, cone-shaped .mountain, capped with snow, and from the snow-cap streamed a broad white fringe of great length, which lay on the shoulder's of the mountain and clad it with a distinctive grandeur. In a moment he was the heart of the mountain, and a great fire was \ur,stmg out from him, and the heat was

equal to ten thousand times ten thousand iinnaces of unslaked and passionate ae.ires. "Extinct," he thought; "exhausted by its own intensities." Then a great longing seized him to climb the mountain; but it was eighteen miles distant, and he had only this day . . . and then . . . then . . . Well, he was no sluggard; it was not work that troubled him, it was the kind of work. . . .

It was loathsome to him, but he could earn more money at it than at anything else he could do. He had reckoned it all up. It would take him tAverfty-five years, if all went well, to save enough to enable him to retire, and then, then, he would take a wee cottage, in the very midst of Nature, and would spend the remainder of his life as her votary. Meantime he would snatch a holiday now and again to keep in touch Avith her. Any man that chose might have a wife, but as for him his delight was in Nature — in the bees and the butterflies, the moths and the lizards, and the wonderful insects with which the earth teemed; —yet, even should he be beguiled into marriage, he would yet so arrange his affairs as to be able to devote his later years to the bush and the wild life of Nature. Men had done it, why not he? Presently he sat down to eat his luncheon, for the fresh air had sharpened his appetite. He fed a host besides himself. Tiny creatures in myriads appeared, and eagerly dragged the crumbs along — crumbs bigger than themselves. How they worked to transport them to their hidden homes! Birds fearlessly invited him to remember them, and the fish in the lake individually strove to be in first as he tossed his lunch remnants into (he water. It was glorious! " What a life!" he said. "What a fool I must be to work indoors." Two gorgeous dragon-flies skimmed overhead, and their colours shone resplendent in the light, "How do the little beggars get aloag like that?" he thought, "Wonder will man himself ever fly without the clumsy machine?" He climbed a fine old fir tree, and sat in a fork of the branches and pursued his thoughts on flight for a time, until he lost himself amid the fantastic forms of the clouds. Another hour sped; he had lived so many lives since the last hour. He had been so much more than mere William Russell Rawson, as the freezing works knew him. Oh, those freezing works! Could he ever get away from the sickly smell of slaughtered animals, from the loathsome sight oi "pelts" and "small parts," from tha bleating of the sheep, and' the sight oi the butchers whose work is paid by the "piece" (that is, by the number which they kill); from the rows on rows of lifeless forms enshrouded in muslin bags; from all the repulsive sights and sounds and smells of the great freezing works, where he earned his daily bread and the money that he put by "for those years that should find him a man of independence and leisure to pursue the congenial interests that were to him as a radiant holiday!

Two men passed him, walking quickly. He heard one man say to the other, " It's all a question of money; a man with money would stand first." It was a commonplace sentence expressing a commonplace sentiment; but, transposed from the usual setting in which he had hitherto made the acquaintance of such commonplaces, it became transmuted for Eawson, and it stirred among his thoughts and probed his ambition, and drove it into a new centre. " It's all a question of money; a man with money would stand first." All the ancient saws and pointed stories that he had heard uttered in favour of money rushed forward and scrambled into place, and constituted a sort of argument in favour of material riches. "Those who have money and those who have none," he reflected, and with the "none" he saw a crowd of impecunious men of all ages, and he was one of the crowd. The moneyless sold their labour and their time to the moneyed, who bought them, and so freed themselves from drudgery and ransomed their own time. He saw that the people with money were clothed by their fellows with showy garments, hiding all that in the moneyless was exposed. The sheen of money hid the vice of the vicious, just as the foliage on the trees hid the twigs. It hid harddealing, cruelty, and hypocrisy, and opened every earthly jdoor to its possessor. "It's all a question of money": money, then, was the answer to the riddle of man's little universe. His alert mind quickly supplied examples from actual life of the "vain© of money"; he remembered young men of promise who had gone under, wanting the ready money that would have saved them, while others negative young men, who had started with them, but supported by money, had arrived in foremost positions and were "somebodies." Yachts, motor cars, landed estates, fine houses, travel, and other amenities were theirs, and . Ah, well, it was his holiday and' he'd dismiss the subject from his mind, and enjov the remainder of his glorious day. He looked about him, wonderingly; his spirit met that of the trees, and he divined something of their life. Who was it that had said of them that "they clap their hands"? He smiled .at the thought. Perhaps the man who wrote it was enjoying a holidav at the time! What couldn't one do if one's life on earth were as long as that of a puriri tree! It would be worth while then, trying to achieve something ! The fine boughs around him swayed gently to and fro, as though they wore endeavourinsr to make him aware of their presence. Was it from the trees that the thought came to him that "if the years of a man's life here were as many as those of the pnriH trees he would spend them all in monev-making"'? Ah. that obtriu-ive money! How could ho get away from the thought of it? He had resolved to devote twentv-five years of his life to acquiring it: why, therefore, should the idea of it obtrude on his holiday? A big

tir con© dropped beside him; he took it up and toyea with it; then he scrutinised it carefully. What a whorl of plans it teemed. A model of methodical arrangement : ho tossed it away. A second cone dropped—it fell on his chest, ami he noticed its fragrance. Ho recalled the scent of cone hres in winter. Was there anything quite so beautiful in the way of fires! A duck waddled up to him, and thrust her bill among the green blades and swallowed something she approved, without any compunction as to tile right of the creatures he swallowed. Suddenly a thought possessed him; it held him so powerfully that he sat up! "Might is right" i the natural world demonstrates it. The strong preys on the weak, and the weak falls to the strong. The little things, the weak things, are a prey to the big things and the strong things; what was the meaning of this continual sacrifice, this tyranny of force? Deep, deep down in the roots of his being he heard the answer, "Right is might"; but he closed his eyes, refused to think, and insisted on his holiday. A whirr in the- water near by caused him to open them, and he saw a duck pursued by a black swan; she was frightened, so frightened as she felt the. swan gaining on her, that her swimming seemed to fail her, and she skimmed the surface of the water in flight, then swam, then fled in flight. On, on, steadily on came the black swan. Rawson sat up. He was excited by the race. His sympathies were with the duck, and yet he understood the instinct of the swan. At the far side of the lake ware many other ducks all eagerly quacking their cheers to the pursued. The swan was heedless cf everything but his single intention—that of prosecuting trespassers. It was with a positive gasp of relief that Rawson witnessed, the safe arrival and the reception of the hunted duck. He rose, and sauntered away from the scene of the strenuous exercise; he wanted to laze; and merely to watch a struggle tired him 1 An odd fancy stole to him. It was that of plucking blades of grass and comparingthem. He had often heard it said that "No two blades cf grass are exactly alike," but he had been sceptical of the saying. W r ho had ever been able to put such a statement to the test? Who had ever attempted to compare the blades of even a single square, acre? The half hour passed quickly enough, and during that time he compared hundreds of grass blades; but no two were alike. Of course that proved nothing ! He left the grass-matching and climbed the slope immediately behind him. He found himself in the midst of a bower of trees, with the lights and shade* trembling through the leaves, and th« delicate tracery of the innumerable greens, with fascinating sky glimpses. Thick trunks, strong boughs, ' slender twigs, ea<;h and all yielded a different shade of brown, as touched by the light beam. The sunshine seemed possessed by a million fingers, and each finger caressed some stem or tendril or leaf. The shadows of the trees Jay on the grass beneath, and a holy, appealing beauty uttered her speech to the soul of man. "What a life," he whispered. "God, what a life!" 11. "I've had a run of bad luck," said the young client, as he sat in the richly-fur-nished office of the wealthy firm of stock agents who had advanced £3OOO on his farm and station. "I've had deuced bad luck." "Take a cigar," said Rawson, a partner in the firm, adding, "they're good." "Thanks." He took one, but made no attempt to light it; he was Jar too absorbed in his-theory. "Take .that wool clip," ho resumed. "I wrote instructions to London to sell at a certain price. The best offer was a halfpenny a pound less, and they therefore withheld from selling. I cabled them on receipt of their advice -to put in at the next sale, and the offer was threepence a pound lower. They accepted, on my behalf. So it's been ail through!" The mortgagee smiled. He had heard similar tales so often; he was hardened. "There's been plenty of work put into the farm, too," the young farmer continued. "How long have you worked it?" "Seven years, and. what's more, I put all my money into it, close on £7000." Rawson touched a bell. "Bring in Mr Taylor's file," he said to the junior who answered his ring. It was brought. Hfc looked it over. "I'm sorry," he said; "but of course we want our money." "But if you would leave it for another year I could meet the interest, and I feel sure ." "Quite impossible, Mr Taylor, quite impossible. We've too much out now. There's only one chance for you, and that is to see if you can rake the money up elsewhere and bring it to us within a month." "That's out of the question. I tried hard before I came here, you may be sure; but I always drew the some answer —a refusal." "Did you try the bank?" "No. ' I had thought of it; but I met you, . . . and you seemed friendly." "I'm afraid there'.'- no room for 'friendship' in business. . . . We can't afford it. . . . We have no choice but tc realise on the property." "You are within your right?, Mr Rawson, of course." "J should like to mtggesfc that you might, perhaps, get a place as manager on a station." "Who'd want me to manage when I've made such a ." Ho flung the unlit cigar across the office, stood erect, and frowned down on the complacent creditor. "Would your friends in the Old Country help you?" "I ask them," said the young man, adding. "No. I've had my chance and it's gone." "AH I can say is that I'm very sorry. very scrry indeed." "You're not sufficiently 'sorry, as you

call it, to give mo a little longer time," said the victim, making a last desperate attempt to stave oil' ruin. "We really couldn't do that, MiTaylor." "Quito' so. I should have known." There was a sustained silence for a couple of minutes, whun Rawson said, "I hope you exonerate us; business is business, you know ." "You are within your legal rights, sir; it's my deuced ill-luck." "If it suits, then, we take possession the day after to-morrow." "You're not inclined to lose much time, Mr Rawson !" "No. In my opinion delay would help neither of us." Young Taylor stood there; he had nothing more to say. lie knew that all the arguments he could advance were as airy nothings beside the more solid argument of hard cash. Tall, thin, of slight build and delicate features, he was apparently one of the least likely men for a farmer that one could well imagine. He had left England with all the small fortune that he had inherited from his father. It had been held in trust for him till he was of age. He had been educated as a gentleman, and was a man of integrity and chivalry. He was a type of man quite common in England, and a type, moreover, that should never leave it, if it is to keep its money. "I'm sorry to hustle you," said Rawson, drawing out his watch and looking at it reproachfully, but 1 have ." ■ "I beg your pardon; I was forgetting. Good day." The two men shook hands, and young Taylor with a nervous flush on his thin face withdrew. In his bedroom that night he wept like a woman. Rawson, left alone, swore an oath, sat back in his chair, and waited for the next comer. What he had expected had happened, and once again he had proved himself a shrewd man of business. He had had a "successful" year. There had been a prolonged drought, and thousands of sheep and cattle had changed hands; the firm in which Rawson was a partner had purchased large numbers, the sellers being unable to provide fodder for their stocii. The losses of the sellers had been heavy; many of them were broken, while the buyers did "splendidly." One of the. keenest buyers was Rawson. What ages it seemed since he was an illpaid clerk in a stock agent's office, with an occasional precious holiday. What a lucky turn of fortune's wheel had brought him into his present position I He had been sent up country to make some inquiries for his employers, and while there had met a wealtny young man, his present partner, who had conceived a liking for him, and the two had entered into partnership. His partner, long since retired from taking an active part in the business, had left him in control. Rawson was stiil a bachelor; his partner was a grandfather, the owner of a fine estate in the country, and fond of entertaining socially. It was long past the quarter of a century in which Rawson had promised himself that he would make a competency that he might retire and sit down in the lap of the- woodlands,, Each year, beyond the hve-and-twcvnty, he had predicted wot' 1 be his last in business; but year had . olio wed year, until he had a record of thirty-five behind him, and was now sixty-five years of age. "I'm as keen as ever on Nature," he thought. By "Nature" he meant the native bush, the open air, the life of forest and lake, and -all the "secret" things that haunt the woodlands. "On my sixty-fifth birthday I'll sell out and return to the dream of my youth." Meantime money "rolled in; his wealth mounted up, until he was oner of the "princes of fortune," and people spoke of his possessions with awe! The time came at last when, having disposed of his interest in the business, he betook himself to a small two-roomed building in the heart of the bush. He was intent on living the "simple life" of an observer, of finding out for himself the mysteries of that hitherto unexplored life. He said to himself that it was good to be free of the office, free of a thousand and one business cares, free of the routine of business life. In his first pleasure ho rose early, between four and five o'clock, boiled his billy and made himself some tea. How different it tasted to that brewed by his housekeeper; he had never liked hcl" tea. He stepped outside; he could heav the water falling into the gorge below, and the notes of the birds as they called up the morning. The trees seemed to know that a stranger was in their midst, and he felt apologetic to them that he was a atrangtr. So many young striplings had developed into sturdy trees since last he saw the place. He watched a. tiny creature burrowing beneath the piles of the wooden house. He stooped to watch it, and then the force of old habit asserted itself and he knelt to observe it more closely. ' There w;w» somethingwrong with his sight; he couldn't make out what had become of it. He put on his glasses. He could see it now, working ita way down backwards, but lie couldn't see very distinctly; he soon lost it. "I must get these glasses alteied," he reflected, "the sight's not quite as it should be." He listened anxiously to the bird notes, identifying them one by one. To his chagrin he discovered that in not a few instances he was unable to class them. ''lt'll soon come back to me," he thought. "I'n. out of praet.iee, that's all." He wag still tall and thin, as he had been in his youth ; he had put on but little flesh. He stood beneath the trees, his head bared to the breeze, and listened Intentlv. lie wanted to hear the bu.-:z of inject Hfc, the musical sing-song in which his earlier years had deligntod. Far away he heard tne factory whistle .T.irnmoning the men to work, but listen as he might his ear failed to catch the sounds for which ho listened.

"Maybe it's tho wrong time of day,"'he soliloquised. The. fragrance of tho morning, laden -with a thousand subtle scents, attracted him. How different the air of

cities. He took out his watch from its pocket, and looked at the hour. It was that at which he usually set out for the office. How strange it seemed that business was going on in the office, just as usual, but without him ! Yes, his time was his own. He would draw up some sort of a time-table for himself, and work at it religiously. It would require an effort, of course, to keep himself to it; but his object was to acquire an intimate knowledge of wild life, of "Nature." He tried to recall that marvellous day of his young manhood, that superb holiday when he had identified himself with bird and bough, with the lily on the lake and the tui on the flax, with the cicalre in their ceaseless call and the anxieties of the mother duck as she quacked her consternation to the fluffy dots around her. "By Jove, it's mail day"; he suddenly remembered the fact. Then he laughed What did the woodland know of mail days? He left his cottage and started out for a stroll in the bush. He wandered on for about two hours, when he met a bushman carrying his swag. The man looked at him, but passed him; "Good morning," said Rawson; "we're in for a spell of fine Weather, I think." The stranger slightly turned, said nothing, but pointed his stick in a certain direction,, upward. Rawson -looked, but could discern nothing. "See that," said the swagman.

"No." "There," still pointing. " W T hat is it?" " Birds," said the swagman, as he continued his walk.

~* Rawson gazed; he thought he saw a puff of smoke. "I wonder what the chap meant," he asked himself. He continued his walk for a couple of hours, then turned again to find his house in the bush. Could it be possible that the hour was but noon? What an age it seemed since he had seen the office, since he had pulled off a good bit of business! He'd get back to his cottage, lunch, and then set to work on making a time-table. . He carried out this programme. He spent the afternoon allotting the hours of the day, and completed the task to his own satisfaction. He would devote the evening to study. He had many fine books on natural history. It was a warm evening; but he liked the look of a wood fire, ro he kindled one, and sat down in the fading light to look at his books. He took up Buller's "Birds," a book of which he was justly proud. For five minutes he was absorbed in what he read, the next five he was less absorbed, and by the end of a quarter of an hour he was asleep, and the bird book slid out of his grasp. In his dreams he interviewed several stock-owners, and lived over again an office scene. The twilight spent itself-, the fire flickered down, and the bush became a vast blank.

When he awoke the fire had gone out, and the summer's night had advanced to ten o'clock. He struck a match, lit his candle, and in a somewhat chastened mood endeavoured to continue his reading. Nothing he read gripped him. He was conscious of a suspicion of " makebelieve " in his efforts. He felt as a grown person feels when playing with .children's toys. He persevered with his reading for about half an hour, but the page -was dead.

"One can't get these things from a book," he assured himself; "one must observe for oneself." He closed the book, locked the door, and went to bed. "I'll get up with the lark," he thought, " and I'll see the top of the morning." As he lay down to rest he remembered that he had spent only a single day in the woods. It seemed to him incredible. The hours were lame: they had lost their wings and limped sadly. When he awoke the rain was teeming down on the bush and hammering on his roof, and the thunders were rolling overhead. In the city when it rained there had always been the motor car to take him to the office, and once there he had had had ho further thought of the weather, except as to its effect on business. He had profited largely by droughts in office days; an untimely shower of rain had not infrequently lost him a thousand pounds or so. It had been a bit of ill luck when a drought broke up at the wrong moment. He ro2e, dressed himself, and opened his back door —the rain drifted towards the front' entrance. How glorious the trees looked! What a confabulation in the bird world! Now, surely, it was an excellent time to observe the immediate effect Of the heavy rains on the parched bush. He stood in his doorway, his face towards the forest, his head slightly raised. He was thinking, calculating what this, rain would mean as entered in the ledger. On which side would the entry appear? He suddenly jerked his mind free of the office. The clouds were parting, the sun was streaming out, the woods were pouring forth an orchestra of rapturous delight; "but he heard nothing, except his own voice directing the drover of certain stock what to do now that the rain had fallen. By the carefully-pre-pared time-table he should have * been keeping the morning with the birds; but, then, of course, the rain had spoiled his scheme. He prepared his breakfast, ate it—he was not very hungry,—tidied up the house, and, referring to his time-table, read, " Walk : observation."

Putting on his hat. he set out, the rain having cer.sed. Tho first thing tha; ho noticed -was i'.e wonderful profusion of lichens, ail saturated by the rain, and showing a rich, soft green, as they thickly clad the branches of tho trees. He knew nothing of lichens, of their "successes" or " failures," of whence they came or whither' they wont, of their friends or their foes. He was fearfully ignorant; he felt it: hut . . . was there any money in lichens? ho asked himself; had anyone ever endeavoured to discover if they had any commercial value? He put his hand on one of the boughs clad with lichens. What a remarkable feeling it had, like nothing else that he knew. It was an energetic, lively cold; it seemed

a part of the nature of the plant, which springily resisted his slight pressure. He carried a magnifying glass in his pocket from force of old habit: but in his speculation on the possible commercial value of the lichen he forgot to use it—even forgot that he carried it. He estimated the monetary value of the timber; he was not sure that his estimate was of any practical value. Tut! What had he to do with "values": He had come out to study the life of the forest—to live its life, not to denude it. For a' few minutes he observed the forms of the various trees, but in less than a quarter of an hour he was busy with the value of the land covered by the bush. He saw surveyors marking it out, and cutting it up into sections. He selected one. A strange feeling stole over him. It was not a pleasant feeling. The bush was undoubtedly becoming inimical to him. It was spying on him, as though he were a traitor! The idea held him that all the trees were conspiring against him, that all were anxious to fling him out —nay, more, that they were ready to fall on him, to catch him up into their branches and swing him into the wind; that their roots Avere everywhere, like huge claws, or as the tentacles of an octopus, ready to clutch at his vitals. It seemed to him as though they shared the secret of distilling mysterious poisons, and were guiltily conferring together to use them against him. He was painfully conscious of a million unseen but unfriendly eyes, looking down upon him. They were all prying into his thoughts and condemning them. Birds and worms, beetles and moths were one in their chorus of denunciation. "Turn him out; turn him out; sting him; bite him; slay him; he is foreign to us, his life is not ours; he would murder us and sell us for money.,' The winds began to raise a sound among the leaves; the sounds hissed him ; the very light that streamed through the leaves, and between the boughs of the unfriendly trees seemed turned on to expose all the designs that he had covered by the term "business." The wind grew viciously stronger. It blew stinging little stones up -into his face; it cracked ancient branches and brought them down, and pursued him as though it were a swift and powerful whip in the hand of a mighty giant seeking his flagellation. Now and again it gathered up its strength into a gust, as though it were .delivering blows straight at him, and deprived him of the power to breathe. The grey clouds darkened and came on in serried ranks before the angry wind. The whole bush was in an uproar, and furies leapt forth to wreak their vengeance on the man at whose bidding the giants of the forest had been sawn asunder, and the strong trees massacred in the awful name of Money. The gloom became darkness, the darkness of a stormy night, and enshrouded the bust. No paths were discernible; progress was by stumbling on amid the irregularities of ancient roots protruding through the floor of the forest. The rapid fall of water descending from a great height, with a ceaseless rustling roar, suggestive of the sullen tears of the wronged, the bitter tears of trust outraged, were to him as the reproaches of those upon whom he had imposed suffering. Tired, almost exhausted, he was yet a long way from the hut. There was nothing for it but to struggle on, step by step, powerless in the midst of such mighty malevolence. Suddenly, quite suddenly, the wind ceased and a profound stillness pervaded the forest, and out of the stillness came a silence, oppressive, vindictive, full of hate.

The anguish of the murdered trees, the slaughtered giants, the forest things, that had lost, their lives that additional entries might be made on his ledgers, was at the heart of this awful silence. From the centre of the silence issued a plaintive cry of despair, as a small bird fell a victim to the greedy night owl. "Nature was cruel; one thing was preying on another," was the thought that flashed through his mind. Strange that the small bird's fate connected itself in his mind with young Taylor. ... It was -pveposterous—there was nothing in it but just a trick of memory ! In the silence, the tremendous silence, he continued to walk in the direction of the hut, when in one pregnant moment he became aware of another man that kept step with him, a younger man, full of spirit and energy. It was this man who spoke. "It was all a question of money," he said. "You deliberately exchanged me for money ! I would have been with you to the last heart-beat, but you banished me." "You're a stranger to me," said Rawson. "I am now; I was once nearer to you than hands or feet—nearer than breathing." '"You?" "Yes, I." "And you are?" "Your nobler self." "And you left me?" "Nav, 'twas not I left you." "What did I gain?" "The 'whole world.' " "And I lost?" "Your own soul."