And his coat grew shabbier and his face lost something of the subdued fire which gave it individuality; and day by day, month by month, there died within him that glorious zest of life, the pure joy of being, thinking, living. He was growing cabbages, and it was dreary work; but he was growing the ash tree too.

He was finishing his second novel, in the early mornings and late at night, on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. But it was hard work, no place free from noise and disturbance, no time when he could be sure of quiet and freedom from interruption. In his best hour he was always liable to be called to settle a fight between the little boys, and in his clearest time he always seemed wanted to mend something in the dilapidated old house: Mrs. Feversham had declined to live in a modern house with modern conveniences because they were all so suburban.' But apart from these real and tangible interruptions there were other things which disturbed John's mind and thoughts, flitting qualms of conscience and a feeling of duty left undone. It would occur to him now and then that perhaps his mother wanted him; he was at home very seldom-she might wish for his society. But, so he told himself, he did not know what to say when he was with her. Or perhaps the boys wanted help with their lessons. But Katie was there, and she knew more than he did. Perhaps Sybil desired companionship. But, then, she had Clara. So he would answer himself, striving to shut his eyes; and because he did not all succeed and because he had a sensitively balanced conscience and mind he wrote with unhappiness and trouble and with but poor success. Thus things went through the autumn and winter, till at last the novel was finished and packed off to the publishers.

John built castles in the air; he would make up a little for his past disagreeableness when the money came. But, alas! it never came. The novel was declined with thanks by the firm who had published the first one. By another firm too, and by another and another. No one who was anyone would have the book, and John at last, bitterly against his will, accepted the judgment of the many and acknowledged to himself that it was a failure. Doggedly he set his lips and started to write it all over again, and grey weariness and disappointment sat at his elbow. But neither weariness nor disappointment would have turned him from his purpose, nor yet failure or defeat. Some men do not so much write that the world may read; rather because it is in them, their chiefest happiness, and because the spirit giveth them utterance."

So John. But one day when he was writing he heard something which did what failure could not do.

It was a Saturday afternoon in April. He was at the time in his bedroom, which for pacific reasons, connected with the one occupied by the twins and the boy next older. The door between the rooms stood ajar, but the table where he usually wrote stood behind it, and Sybil and Katie, who came into the boys' room with some clothes, did not know he was home yet.

'You see, Katie,' Sybil was saying as they entered, it would be wrong to miss such a chance. The year's mourning is not up, it is true, but papa would not have wished me to consider that. Henry wants me to marry him and go out right away, and I shall do it; it would be wrong not.'

Katie agreed, but without enthusiasm. It will be splendid for you,' she said, 'but beastly here when you have gone.'

It will be just the same as it is now,' Sibyl told her; but Katie did not agree.

"You know perfectly well it won't,' she said. 'I tell you what- Do let those clothes alone and listen to me. I tell you what I shall do--I shall marry the Professor.'

'Don't talk such nonsense!' Sybil's remark was accompanied by the sound of shaking garments.

It is not nonsense,' came the answer. 'I'm seventeen, and the Professor is not more than fifty, and awfully clever and rather well off-there is no need for him to lecture on geology at girls' schools, only he likes teaching. He would give up lecturing if he married me, and teach one girl in particular instead of a lot in general.'

'But, Katie, is he fond of you?'

There was a sound of someone drumming on the window; then Katie's voice, rather low, from that part of the room. 'I don't know; perhaps I ought not to have said I would marry him like that. Of course he may not care for me.'

'You know whether he does or not-you must know.' Sybil sounded as businesslike as ever, till, with a sudden alteration of manner, she said: "Why, Katie, I believe you care for him!'

"I could if I let myself,' came from the window, accompanied by more drumming, and I shall when you marry.'

'But who will look after things here?'

They will look after themselves. I don't see that the family has much claim on me; besides, there is Clara.'

'Clara is no use, you know that. The boys will simply run wild; no one will check them if you go.'

They do that already, pretty well; you have little authority, I have less, and John knows and cares nothing about them.' 'Oh, John! You can't count on him.'

Up to that point the writer had only been conscious of the conversation to wish, as he often had occasion to before, that the conversers would be quick and go. But at the mention of his own name he suddenly knew what they were talking about.

'He ought to count,' Katie was saying; he ought to care. If he did his duty he would be a real head of the house, not a dreamer shut up with his own fancies.'

'My dear, he works all day for the family; writing is his hobby. He may just as well do that as play football or cricket or anything else. You don't understand men, Katie; they are not like women, they must have some relaxation, and John's has at least the merit of cheapness."

'Oh, stuff!' Katie said impatiently. 'I suppose he will think it our fault if the boys go to the devil. Oh, it is strong language, I dare say, but none too strong! Who is going to manage them? I can't control them; Clara only nags; and John, who might do something, shuts himself up when he is at home, or if he ever does come out he is so preoccupied and disagreeable he had better have stayed where he was.'

Katie went out of the room as she delivered this judgment, and Sybil, after shutting a drawer and setting a chair straight, followed, leaving John to silence and such thoughts as made silence useless. He sat, the ink dry on his pen, the last word unfinished on his paper, staring straight before him and seeing there a vision of himself as others saw him. It hurt, hurt terribly; and Sybil's calm relegation of his writing to the sphere of recreations, pastimes, and hobbies not less than Katie's more sweeping condemnation of himself. At first surprise and pain were stronger than anything else, then anger and injury and a feeling of misjudgment. But soon the well-developed conscience began to assert itself, the old plaguing questions and doubts came back. What if the sisters were right after all? Were they right? He put the dry pen down and deliberately examined things; he recalled a hundred trivial trying incidents, his daily life in its daily detail; and everywhere and on every hand the hard judgment began to show just. He rose and began to pace the room; every

thing was wrong, he was wrong, life was absolutely and hopelessly wrong. But could he set it right? Could anyone? He walked and walked, struggling with the hopeless tangle; then all at once, with an unconscious gesture as if he pushed it from him, he sat down again. He could do nothing immediately, there was nothing to be done at present; he must observe first, set a watch on himself and the others, and make quite, quite sure that a remedy was needed, and that, as Katie said, the remedy was really within

his power.

Acting on this determination, in the days that followed he made careful observations of himself and the others, and so came to learn one or two things. The first was that he was completely outside the real life of the family; no one told him anything, no one asked him anything. No one expected him to sympathise with joys or troubles or share work or play. The second was that he was irritable if interrupted at work: if disturbed by a pillow fight in the next room when writing in the early morning, inclined to vent his feelings with unnecessary severity on the offenders; if called out to settle a dispute, more ready to stop it peremptorily than inquire into justice or the claim of either party. And the third discovery was that the five young brothers were badly behaved, badly trained, badly brought up, unchecked by their mother and beyond their sisters' control, going from bad to worse. There were other things he discovered, but they all tended the same way. Clearly he stood convicted; clearly it was set before him that a remedy was indeed needed. It did not lie within the sisters' powers, or within anyone else's; it might or might not lie within his, but duty shouted aloud that he should at least try.

Ay, but it was hard! There was but one thing for him to do-let the writing go. He could not work and write and keep his temper and his sympathies too; he could not attend to his business and his unreal world and his brothers' morals; he could not do his duty to his family and indulge his craving for ink as well. He could not, in fact, have the cabbage garden under the ash tree. And if it went it must be altogether, root and branch, every bit. Merely to leave off writing would not be enough for one who had it in the blood as he had; he must leave off thinking about it, dreaming of it, hoping for it. He must set some other aim before himself, have some other standard and ideal; he must deliberately block out any future dream concerning it, and even VOL. XXV.-NO. 149, N.S.

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cut off the past, destroying, for fear of his own weakness, anything that spoke of it, that told what had been and so whispered what might be.

soon.

He was no hero, and it was not at once that he came to this: it took a little time even genuinely to realise the need; but, being a simply honest sort of person, he reached that point comparatively But the next was not easy; it was not easy to follow out the only possible course-it was bitterly, bitterly hard, for he loved the dream-people to whom he was called upon to say good-bye as he loved few real people; and the work, in spite of failure and weariness, was the one joy of a somewhat barren life. So he struggled and struggled, but in the end duty won; and, rightly or wrongly, necessarily or unnecessarily—and there may be some who say could have done his duty without this trouble-he gave himself the command that the ash tree must come down.

he

The decision made, there was a sacrifice by fire. He chose an evening when the house was comparatively quiet and most of the family out. The one servant was out too, and the large kitchenthe best room in the old house-was empty. Down to the kitchen he carried his papers, his manuscripts, the Press notices of his first book, his own copy of it, even his blank paper, and there on the hearth he burned them. Close he stood, feeding the flames, stirring them when they sunk down, watching them flicker and blaze. Brightly they leapt, as hopes had leapt once; warmly glowing as fancy glowed then, building in their red hearts ephemeral faces, cities, palaces, as the words that were vanishing had built them once for the reader and the writer, the weaver of tales who would weave no more. And the fire shone ruddy on the red brick floor and the eight-day clock ticked solemn and loud, and the crickets cheeped cheerily under the old hearthstones, and the vanishing words, the vanishing life, mattered to no one at all. The flames died down, for the last time they sank, the red ashes grew black, crumbled, fell. He stirred them for the last time; they did not glow again, there was no scrap of either red or white left, all was black; all was dust now, all dead. For a moment be stood looking, then he turned abruptly away, and, stumbling to a chair, stretched his arms upon the table and hid his face in then

There was a black cat sitting before the fire; for a little it sat looking wisely at the charred papers; then it rose and, stretching jumped on the table. Softly it rubbed itself against the extended arms, insinuatingly forced its nose under the bowed head. Doubt