Who even then while the song of praise rang on the night air, had descended to the abasement of their helplessness and suffering, and Who thenceforward should hallow, by His footsteps, the whole path of life until the thorns wherewith the ground was cursed were lifted on to His brow as a crown, and His lips would utter what His brethren, laying aside their earthly life with its failures and incompleted work, might never utter, "It is finished!"

So Berthold made answer; when many a friend asked him wherefore he laid aside so grand a work as seemed that Hymn of Praise, "I have yet much to learn;" and when they confidently declared that he knew even in his youth more than the masters of music; he told them that he must sit at the feet of many teachers before his work could be completed.

66 I guess your meaning, Berthold," said one of his young companions, a youth beautiful and vigorous as a bough in April; “your teachers are the aged mountains that watch through our hours of sleep with their long robes folded around them, and their brows upturned to the stars, but echoing the thunder with mighty voices when the storm bursts in a summer night. How many songs, too, may be taught you by the voices of the wind, by the ebbing and the flowing tide, and by the thousand whispers that haunt the earth at all hours, and to which you are even now listening till your eye grows broad and bright like the eye of the half-roused deer."

True enough!" answered Berthold, "I have drunk in the music of nature for many an enchanted hour, but I must seek other teachers now. I must turn from the sunshine of life and seek its shadow; I must mingle with men and women, suffering, sad, and struggling, and listen for some notes of praise rising above the tumult of life's trou bled waters. A few days more, and I shall be far away."

Night had fallen on the city. Over the distant meadows the sunset light still lingered, brightening the low horizon with a long line of fiery gold, and reddening the branches of the leafless woods and the ground where lay their scattered wealth of leaves, jewels and gold, waiting till the winter wind should rush forth and gather them out of sight. Out upon the sea the sails of passing ships yet glowed in the evening sun, and shepherd lads upon the mountain tops still watched the grey clouds sailing into glory; but darkness had already fallen on

the city, and through the heavy air, which no night breeze stirred, the stars looked pale and dim. Yet night brought no solemn silence there; and the sound of busy feet, and the lights that shone in every window ere daylight had well departed, told of work and not of rest. Brief hurried words alone met the ear; no lengthened greetings or farewells, no sudden laughter; men and women seemed passing in endless succession, each intent on their own thoughts and designs, neither asking for sympathy nor bestowing it. Sometimes a pitiful voice whose slow accents rose in strange contrast to the busy silence, repeated a tale of want and woe, but these things were new to none, and the words fell unheeded; and among them all Berthold wandered, watching them with sad and weary eyes.

"What shall I find here ?" he asked himself; "here where men walk with closed lips, dumb and forbidding as their closed doors, here where men live with the shadow of sin and sorrow for ever on their souls and on their faces. A sea that cannot rest seems this throng of human lives, appearing, struggling forward, seen a moment, and vanishing away like the waves that press onward only to break upon the shore. They cannot rest, and yet upon every face is that mournful yearning for rest which death has set for a seal upon the brow of man. Those two children that pass me now wearily clinging to each other's rags, they wear it already; and, oh! what bitterness possesses one's heart in looking on their brief winter's day, in whose low sun the shadows never shorten. The old man wears it too; walking with feeble yet hurried steps and with eyes still eager in their restlessness, though dim with age. His stunted form, never braced by any vivifying influence of joy and hope, twisted and broken as some tree that has endured years of battle with the fierce sea winds, is it not a very counterpart of the blighted undeveloped soul within? From the hour of his birth he has been scaring away the birds of prey, hunger and disease, that have whirled around him with watchful eyes, ever drawing nearer and nearer; he will be their victim; and what will he have accomplished in this life of desperate struggle against death, who will at last be victor?"

Oppressed by these troubled questionings Berthold turned from the busy street, and slowly walked along a path that lay between the river and a range of low houses. The fitful glare of furnace fires, and the ceaseless ring of hammers was not here. The river flowed deep and black and silent, reflecting a few scattered lights on the farther side,

and strange gleams from the vessels that lay at anchor. A troop of men and women with sturdy steps and rough garments came along the pathway on their way to work through the night hours. As they passed, Berthold saw children's forms among them, their sharp eyes and pale faces were upturned to his for a moment, and then all disappeared down a narrow alley that led to their place of labour. As the sound of their footsteps died away, and the harsh sound of the bell that marked the working hours ceased, Berthold sighed at the thought of woman sharing the doom of man and eating bread in the sweat of her brow.

Suddenly a woman's voice rang out on the murky evening air, in such a flow of sweet song, that Berthold's whole soul seemed revived by the sound. Never under blooming chestnut boughs, never in the golden sunshine had he heard such pure notes, such a joyous carol. It was a song he had heard light-hearted girls singing as they gathered the new blown honeysuckles from the hedgerows, or sat idly among the garden flowers. A moment's pause and the song was changed, but the strain was still replete with gladness and the tones strong and sweet as before.

Surely GOD hath sent some pure spirit to glorify Him by its gladness in the midst of these abodes of want and sorrow: some spirit to whom care and sin are unknown and enshrined in a fair form befitting that voice of beauty." These were the musician's thoughts as he stood entranced and listening a little apart from the closed door. Care, and sin, and sorrow were at work still. The song ceased suddenly as a rough hand from without shook the door with desperate energy, and a voice called out in hoarse tones, "Let me in! let me in! my boy is dying!"

The door was hastily opened at her summons, and the light of a fire streamed out upon the pathway. It showed a woman clasping in her arms a fainting boy, while two little children clung to her: "My boy is dying," she said, "and we have no shelter. We are strangers in this place, and my husband has forsaken me in my misery. Oh, let us in, let us in!" Her voice, which a moment before was wild and loud, now sank into a sobbing whisper, and her trembling hands would have lost their hold of their burden, had not Berthold hastened forward and carried the poor sufferer within the doorway, while the mother and the little ones followed.

A bed stood in a corner of the room, and he gently laid the boy upon it, and then turned to look at the woman whose dwelling had

been thus ruthlessly invaded.

Hers had been the song that had filled

his imagination with thoughts of joy and beauty, and now she stood before him a woman that had parted with youth early, who had never possessed beauty of feature, and whose face bore the look of one before whom want had stood daily, like the giant of old, uttering his battle challenge. A girl, wasted and crippled with disease, sat by the fire staring with frightened aspect at the strange group assembled round her. The deserted wife was pouring out her tale with tears and wild gestures, sometimes with an energy of entreaty that almost rose to anger, sometimes with the piteousness of a breaking heart.

"The fever is on my boy," she said, "the fever that almost laid me in my grave. You will not have the heart to turn us out," she implored, as her eager eyes caught a change in the face of her hearer. "You cannot have the heart to turn me out!"

"No, I have not," came the answer after a pause. "My husband works late to-night, but do not fear his coming, he will not deny you shelter for a sick child."

"You have children of your own," said Berthold, hardly asking the question, for he had heard the mother's tones in her words.

"Five, well and strong!" she answered, and as the words passed her lips, the rigid resolution, which her face had hitherto worn melted away, and turning with a sob to the crippled girl she bent her head over her and wept bitterly.

The enemy so long dreaded, the fever that had entered so many homes, had at last crossed her threshold, and how many might be its prey? The strong hard-working father, the little ones that were the treasures of that poor home, which of them might not be snatched from her? And she whose life was least precious, some might say, yet was very precious to her who had reared that poor sickly sister from her cradle to womanhood, cherishing the dim flickering flame of life, soothing the daily suffering, and whiling away the weary hours with that same sweet singing, which brought joy and beauty as near as might be to her heart, must she be taken from her now? Well might the tide of fear overwhelm her, but in a few moments it had swept by, and she rose up again calm though trembling.

Vainly did Berthold offer to find some other shelter for the wanderers; the wind had risen, and the rain already began to beat upon the window, and she shook her head as she turned to the sick boy and brought him a draught of water and warm coverings.

"It would be death to move him now," she said. "Yes, GOD will help me," she added steadfastly, as Berthold's trembling prayer, “GOD help you!" accompanied his gift of gold, when he left her door.

He gave bountifully, but he brought away from that poor dwelling, wisdom more precious than gold. Not among the whispers of the woods, not in the rapturous musings beneath the star-lit sky, not among the high-born of gentle speech and gracious lives, had he caught this sound of faith in GOD and love to man which here rose steadfastly above fear and above care.

Who does not feel the blessing of a bright morning, whether in summer or winter, when the blue sky looks down through the white clouds upon the earth, like a blue-eyed child that wakes up full of laughter, and pushing aside the white curtains leans through the open window with a smile and a bright glance for every passer by? Men going to their daily labour through the yet silent streets, walk with their heads erect, as if they felt GOD's blessing in the sun-lit air, children run leaping and shouting they know not why, and with upraised arms that seem ready to clasp some invisible kindred spirit, and mourners, returning in broken groups and with quick steps from the burial, while the stir of a new day of work gathers around them, look up to the sunny heavens and remember how the dead are living and resting even in the daylight.

And when the sunshine threads its way between the houses, their dingy faces brighten one by one, as a smile brightens in turn the faces of a crowd when some gay spectacle passes down their ranks. Where the sloping street meets the river there still hangs a haze, half golden and half grey, through which are seen the masts of boats and ships; but out upon the breezy river the light is glittering sharply, dazzling the eyes and making them turn for relief downward where the wooden beams of the pier darken the water with their reflections and shadows.

On the pier Berthold stood gazing sometimes into the rippling water, and sometimes watching with pleasure the active beings that surrounded him. Here men with straining arms and shouting voices dragged a boat on shore, there with vigorous push another was sent dashing into the water, which the oars smote light and quick till the boat and the rowers showed like a black spot in the shining distance. Every ship far and near, idle though it seemed to lie, was the scene of busy life, and the sounds of labour fell musically on Berthold's listening ear. The