"I charge you, by everything that is sacred, to take no further step in the business that brings you here, until I recover, and we can consult together; and, if I die, I charge you, as you would have me rest quietly in my grave, to take none at all. BERGAN."

Doctor Trubie flung down the letter with a most disgusted face. "To think that Roath should escape me thus!" he exclaimed, discontentedly. "That is, to be sure, if Bergan does not recover. He shall recover!"

Upstairs he sprang, two steps at a time. But, once in Bergan's chamber, his heart failed him. The patient lay in a stupor that seemed very near of kin to death. Two physicians stood by the bed, and the first words that met his ear were,—"No hope."

PART FOURTH.
A NEW FIELD.

I.
ALIVE IN FAMINE.

Rarely does a man go down to the verge of the grave, and look into its profound and pregnant depths, without carrying from henceforth traces of the journey. His views of life will be truer, if not sadder, forever afterward. The laws of moral perspective, though they do not change, will be better understood; so that objects at a distance are no longer dwarfed to the understanding, however they may appear to the eye. Character becomes the central "point of sight," toward which duty continually draws converging right lines, by the aid of which happiness, fame, and wealth, fall into their proper places, and assume their true proportions.

Bergan Arling was seated in his office at Savalla. At first sight, it might seem that he was little changed, but a closer inspection would have awakened some surprise that the lapse of little more than a year could have changed him so much. The youthfulness had gone out of his face,—that half-eager, half-wistful look which says so plainly, "The world is all before me, where to choose;"—it was now the face of a man among men, who had found his place and his work, who had grappled with many hard problems, and solved some, who was accustomed to deal with serious subjects in a serious way, and who had withal, a definite rule and object of life. In short, it was informed with a positive and noble individuality, born out of suffering, and not yet wholly oblivious of the pangs that had given it birth, but certain, in good time, to attain to the fulness of an inward joy, which, having a deep wellspring of its own, would be little dependent upon the ebb and flow of outward circumstance.

Nor had the year been fruitless of exterior results. Scarcely had Bergan mastered the details of his new office, when his partner, Mr. Youle, was taken sick, and he was left to conduct its affairs pretty much alone. Several cases of importance being in hand, he was thus afforded a rare opportunity to achieve a rapid fame. His reputation already overshadowed that of many of his legal brethren who had greatly the advantage of him in years and experience.

From the first, he had made it an invariable rule never to speak against his clear convictions of right; and it was curious to observe what an influence the knowledge of this fact was beginning to have upon the community. The cause which he embraced, however hopeless its aspect, always commanded a degree of respect, and was watched with a certain reservation of judgment, in consideration of his acknowledged integrity of purpose; while, as a necessary sequence (from which Bergan, in his humility, would have been glad to escape), the cause which he was understood to have declined was apt to be pronounced suspicious in the popular judgment, however it might go in the courts. So certain is the talent which is known to be conjoined with a pure aim and an upright life, to win, soon or late, high place and strong influence, even in a world that disallows its very principle of being! The visible fruits of righteousness commend themselves to all lips, whatever is thought of the root from whence they spring.