Ralph had not turned to the signature, he knew the writing too well, and knew it for bright, happy jocund George Carlyon's. He read on:
"All that has happened in the world, of late, has driven me mad. Dear old Tom Hammond wrote me fully of his change of heart, and besought me to face the whole matter of my 'eternal destiny,' as he termed it. I simply did not reply to his letter. Three days later he was taken, with all those others, to God. Since then I have plunged into everything trying to drown thought, and remorse, but I cannot, so I am ending all—there's a mad thing to say, as if death could end all. Though I do not doubt but what many other fellows will do what I am doing now. Good bye, good old Hunky Archie,
"Your unhappy, rotten,
"GEORGE."
As Ralph lifted his eyes from the paper he found Sir Archibald's fixed upon him, and the anguish in the poor old dull eyes drew tears to Ralph's.
"We found him," cried the old man, "in the boathouse, by the lake, with a bullet through his temples. My poor boy! My noble boy!"
Dry-eyes, but with a soul full of anguish, his features, too, twisted with the anguish of his soul, the old man rocked himself for a moment in his chair.
Looking up suddenly, he startled Ralph by the bitterness of his tones, as he said:
"God forgive me! But I could find it easy to curse our clergy, our ministers, our bishops, our teachers, for that when we looked to them, and paid them, to tell us the right, the true thing, they let us go on deluded by the belief that attendance upon the outward form was sufficient to make us sure of Heaven in the future. Why, Bastin, good fellow, do you know that more than half of the clergymen with whom I was well acquainted, are among those whom God has left behind, and not one of those whom I know, thus left, has a mite of concern about their state, but seem to have gone right over to the Devil, if I may so say it. What does it all mean?"
Ralph began to speak kindly, sympathetically to him, but the old man suddenly interrupted with:
"And yesterday's article in 'the Courier' upon the opening of that Temple at Jerusalem, with all that about the 'Mark of the Beast;' that mock (I suppose it was mock) miracle, with the fire consuming the sacrifice, and then that awful portent of darkness, thunder, and lightning—but no rain. It reminded me of the scene at Calvary, when the Christ was crucified. What does it all mean, Bastin?"