medical men is that an overwhelming proportion of disease arises from errors in diet. The first thing which the doctor has to do is to limit, weigh, and select the patient's diet. Perhaps the patient rebels. Like the Northern Farmer, he must have his glass of yaale. Said a countryman one day, 'I takes all the things I likes, and let them fight it out among themselves.' But this cannot be done with impunity. Nature makes the dullest comprehend her teachings. At first she speaks in a gentle whisper, and presently in a voice of thunder. At first it is very irksome and wearisome to fret and fight under a lot of arbitrary rules. But we find that, like better men, we must go into training. And by and by we may have to find it makes an intellectual amusement, so to speak, to be playing at chess with gout or dyspepsia, or Bright's disease, or angina pectoris. For

all these perils lie invidiously in wait for those who dine not wisely, but too well.' A man who lives moderately, in point of fact, gets better dinners, and gets them for a longer time. He finds out that there is an æstheticism in these things. Better even to live long on mutton-chops and toastand-water than to be ill on viands and liquors that transcend the natural strength. It is as well to live with as much refinement and good taste as possible, but even the wise heathen could tell us that we should not 'live to eat, but eat to live.' St. Paul has branded a very unpleasant word on the Cretans of his day, which may be seen on referring to it, which would probably suit many other localities besides Crete. All these things are emphatically those that perish in the using meats for the belly, and the belly for meats, but God shall destroy both them and it.'

เ

CHAPTER XXVII. 'HOW MUCH ARE YOU SORRY? PURPOSELY Mr. Fife deferred keeping his appointment on the Wednesday, when Mr. Gayre was to give a final answer, till the last possible moment.

'I thought you had perhaps changed your mind, and were not coming,' said the banker.

'It seemed to me only fair to give you as long a time as possible,' answered Mr. Fife; ‘although when a man fails to make up his mind at first I generally notice he experiences considerable difficulty in making it up at last. Well, how is it to be?'

'I have decided to go on with the matter.'

'Come, that is more to the point. Have you spoken to Miss Drummond?'

All

so romantic a gentleman. that remains now for you to do in the way of self-renunciation and chivalry is to give the bride away, take Dane into partnership, and entreat both husband and wife always to regard you as a devoted friend. They won't know how to express their gratitude sufficiently for a while, and then they'll begin to say, “How intolerable it is to have a stranger coming in and out at all hours! He takes good care we shall never forget that kindness he did us." Or else Mr. and Mrs. Dane will begin to wrangle about you. He will observe he should have preferred to work out his time rather than lie under an eternal obligation; and she will remark, she wishes he had never been let out of prison.'

Mr. Gayre looked across at his tormentor, but spoke no wordindeed, he had no word ready to speak.

'When are you going to Colvend? asked Mr. Fife.

'I have not made up my mind.' 'O and Mr. Fife laughed ironically.

"May I ask what you mean by your extremely offensive manner?' inquired Mr. Gayre.

Not much, but enough,' was the calm reply. When do you

make up your

suppose you will mind? There is no time to be lost, you know.'

'I do not mean to be dictated to by you,' declared Mr. Gayre, trembling with passion.

'Pardon me, I fancy I must dictate to you a very little. Just give me an idea, will you, as to the outside time within which it may suit your convenience to open proceedings?'

If it is money you want-' 'I want money; but I can do without it for a short period. And now, as you can't, or won't, give a straightforward answer to a plain question, listen to me. I am not going to wait your convenience. A wrong has been done, and it must be righted,' added Mr. Fife, with a nasty jeer. That nice young man ought to be set upon his pedestal again. He needs comfort; and we know who will console him. It really is a shame that an innocent person should remain under such a cloud merely because you are unable to decide what you will do.'

'I quite agree with you, and you had better see Mr. Colvend yourself.'

the whole business, in preference to yourself, who have posed as Oliver Dane's best friend. Friend, indeed! If you could keep him in penal servitude for life, I believe you would do it.'

'For Heaven's sake take the matter into your hands, and leave me in peace! I will still stand to what I said as regards money, but I should prefer, in other respects, to be out of the business.'

'Meaning, I presume, you would rather some other person hung you than put the noose round your own neck and kick the stool away.'

It was really appalling! Mental analysis, the comprehension of hidden motives, knowledge of the weakness and wickedness of human nature, Mr. Gayre had always previously considered mere matters appertaining to the higher culture. He felt shocked to find a low fellow like Mr. Fife-a man he would not have shaken hands with on any consideration-a humdrum routine creature as he seemed on the business treadmill, could lay his hand with unerring certainty on the festering sore, and by the aid of instinct, or some equally unaccountable natural gift, jump to the comprehension of motives understood but dimly even by the person they influenced.

It is a shock to any one who thinks he is acquainted with the world to find his knowledge is of the narrowest description, and Mr. Fife's remark affected Mr. Gayre like a cold douche.

I fear I scarcely follow you,' he said.

'O yes, you do,' was the uncompromising retort. In your class of life your remark is merely, I suppose, a polite hint for me to amend or retract my words; but it is only because I remember my rank is not yours I have refrained

from using plainer and stronger language. By appointment-your own appointment, remember-I came here to-night, as I understood, finally to arrange details : and first you tell me what I knew before, that you had decided to go

on with the matter; and second, because something I say does not quite please your mightiness, that I had better go through with it myself. The whole fact is you want to "trim," and you do not exactly see how to do it. You do not like to tell Miss Drummond her lover is innocent, and trust to her generosity, because you know as well as I do women have no generosity, and no gratitude either, if you come to that. You are averse to going to Colvend because you feel the first sentence you speak will put the girl beyond your reach for ever; and you do object to adopt the plan I suggested because you desire to keep up the character of being something more than human. That is how the case stands, and accordingly you wish to drift for a bit, to see if anything turns up. The captain in the old song "Told them he would marry, but he never said when ;" and in like manner you may keep on "intending" to go to Colvend's till the Millennium, or till Oliver Dane's sentence has nearly expired.'

If you have quite finished, Mr. Fife, perhaps you will kindly return me the paper I was foolish enough to sign, and leave my house.'

'As to leaving, I shall go in a minute; as to giving up the paper, I'm not such a flat. As to the rest-this is Wednesdayif by Saturday you have not spoken to Mr. Colvend, I shall take the liberty of asking a private audience with your young lady on Sunday.'

'Why delay? Why not tell

her all you know-if you know anything-to-morrow?'

do

'I said before, I had my reasons. I say again, I have my reasons; but even they won't allow me to postpone action indefinitely. Oliver Dane is ill; next we hear of him he may be dying. If he should die-and he is just the sort of chap to break his proud heart-what becomes of both of us then? You would have to whistle for your young wife a long time before you would get her, I am afraid; and I should have to whistle for my money, and something else'

"How do you know that Dane is ill?'

'What does that matter? I know as all men who are their own detectives always do know. Yes; and if you had not been so confoundedly high and mighty with me, I could tell you something else it might be your interest to hear. As matters stand, I mean to keep my information to myself for the present.'

'Believe me, I would rather remain in ignorance for ever than be enlightened by you.'

"That is courtesy, I suppose, and good breeding, and all the rest of it. However, he laughs best who laughs last. Now I am going. Saturday, remember, is the latest, and I shall not come here again. Good-night, Mr. Gayre. You think yourself a very wise man; I will not shock your refined nerves by telling you my opinion on that point.'

He was gone. As he closed the library door with a bang, Mr. Gayre understood the Dane complication had entered on a new phase. After ninety-six hours it could be no longer in his power to speak or to refrain. That halting steed, himself, would -unless he made good use of the short time still at his disposal

-be altogether out of the running.

There might be racing hot and swift-hope, despair, falsehood, asseveration, exultation, disappointment; but his share in the excitement, the rush, the prize, would be nil. Not even as a friend might he hope to participate in the gladness of the day of triumph, for he understood perfectly that if he failed before night on that fatal Saturday to decide, nothing but renunciation was possible. Mr. Fife, in telling the story, would make Susan clearly understand how he had halted between good and evil, and failed to do what was right, though he lacked courage actually to commit a wrong.

'Yes; that is the way this brute-so he mentally styled Mr. Fife would put the case.' After all there is but a right, there is but a wrong; and would Mr. Fife have been totally inaccurate in describing the banker's conduct as cowardly? Perhaps the courage or the temperament which enables a man to plunge headlong into sin may upon occasion give him strength to perform some sort of enormous self-abnegation-sacrifice his own life to save some other life to all appearance perfectly worthless, smilingly wave farewell to happiness for the sake of one who, to our poor human thought, does not deserve to be especially happy.

It is a great mystery. The tendency of our modern life is to wipe all strong emotions, all supreme passions, off the society slate; and yet in a book it has of late become somewhat bad form to study, but which will survive, as it has survived, many changes of fashion and creeds of morals, we are specially warned against being neither hot nor cold.

Perhaps as Mr. Gayre beheld

the face of that devil which skulks within the heart of every man and woman, he felt it might have been better had he chanced to be weaned on some different creed than one ignoring our hu manity and the temptations which assail it.

Seven times were the walls of Jericho compassed ere they fell; but at sound of the final trumpet Jericho was an entrenched city no longer, because its foundations were rotten and accursed. If a tree have no root, how can it produce leaf and bud and fruit? The earth, which is gracious even to its meanest child, may give it for a short time some poor show of vitality and greenness, but it is not strong enough to suck a sap which shall support even during the few short days of springtime; and so it withers away, and is cut down, because it bereth the ground.'

cum

In the day of his trial, Mr. Gayre found himself wanting; in the hour when he should have been strong to bring forth the best fruit of a man's life, he was barren. Now, he knew it is not enough to decide that we will resist temptation-we should flee it. Those who are wise will not let even its shadow fall across their path.

If that night-that first nighthe had allowed his better angel to have her way, and lead him through storm and darkness to a land of safety, whence he never could return to the wave beaten rock where he sat so long consi dering, this terrible struggle need never have rent his bosom; but now he could not with his own hand sign the death warrantwith his own lips he could not speak the words which should give to Oliver Dane his liberty, to Susan Drummond her lover.

He could have done great things