no use to try discussion. We are a couple of
obstinate fellows, and our minds are made up."

And Colonna, seeing that they were made up,
wisely said no more.

General Sirtori bad been made Pro-Dictator
during the absence of Garibaldi; and Colonna,
though he declined any recognised ministerial
office, remained at Palermo to lead the
revolutionary cabinet, and supply, as he had been
supplying them for the last five-and-twenty
years, the brains of his party. So the young
men bade him farewell, and set sail that evening
at about eleven o'clock, taking with them a
Palermitan pilot who knew the coast.

It was a glorious night, warm and cloudless,
and lighted by a moon as golden and gorgeous
as that beneath which the Grecian host sat by
their watch-fires, "on the pass of war." A
light but steady breeze filled the sails of the
Albula, and crested every little wave with
silver foam. To the left lay the open sea—to
the right, the mountainous coast-line, dark and
indefinite, with here and there a sparkling
cluster of distant lights marking the site of
some town beside the sea. By-and-by, as they
left Palermo further and further behind, a vast,
mysterious, majestic mass rose gradually above
the seaward peaks, absorbing, as it were, all
the lesser heights, and lifting the pale profile of
a snowy summit against the dark blue of the
sky. This was Etna.

The young men passed the night on deck.
Unconscious of fatigue, they paced to and fro
in the moonlight and talked of things which
they had that day seen, and of the stirring
times to come. Then, as the profound beauty
and stillness of the scene brought closer
confidence and graver thoughts, their conversation
flowed into deeper channels, and they spoke of
life, and love, and death, and that Hope that
takes away the victory of the grave.

"And yet," said Saxon, in reply to some
observation of his friend's, " life is worth having,
if only for life's sake. Merely to look upon
the sun, and feel its warmth—to breathe the
morning air—to see the stars at night—to
listen to the falling of the avalanches, or the
sighing of the wind in the pine forests, are
enjoyments and privileges beyond all price.
When I hear a man say that he does not care
how soon he walks out of the sunshine into his
grave, I look at him to see whether he has eyes
that see and ears that hear like my own."

"And supposing that he is neither blind nor
deaf, yet still persists—what then?"

"Then I conclude that he is deceiving
himself, or me—perhaps, both."

"Why not put a more charitable construction
upon it, and say that he is mad?" laughed the
Earl. " Ah, Saxon, my dear fellow, you talk as
one who has never known sorrow. The love of
nature is a fine taste—especially when one has
youth, friends, and hope, to help one in the
cultivation of it; but when youth is past and the
friends of youth are gone, I am afraid the love
of nature is not alone sufficient to make the
fag-end of life particularly well worth having.
The sunshine is a pleasant thing enough, and
the wind makes a grand sort of natural music
among the pines; but you may depend that a
time will come when the long lost light of a
certain pair of eyes, and 'the 'sound of a voice
that is still,' will be more to you than cither."

"I have never denied that," replied Saxon.
"I only maintain that life is such a glorious
gift, and its privileges are so abundant, that it
ought never to seem wholly valueless to any
reasoning being."

"That depends on what the reasoning being
has left to live for," said the Earl.

"He has life to live for—life, thought,
science, the glories of the material world, the
good of his fellow-men."

"The man who lives for his fellow-men, and
the man who lives for science, must both begin
early," replied the Earl. " You cannot take up
either philanthropy or science as a pis aller. And
as for the glories of the material world, my
friend, they make a splendid mise en scène; but
what is the mise en scène without the drama?"

"By the drama, you mean, I suppose, the
human interests of life?"

"Precisely. I mean that without love, and
effort, and hope, and, it may be, a spice of
hatred, all the avalanches and pine woods upon
earth would fail to make the burden of life
tolerable to any man with a human heart in his
body. Your tirst sorrow will teach you this
lesson—or your first illness. For myself, I
frankly confess that I enjoy, and therefore prize,
life less than I did when . . . when I believed
that I had more to hope from the future."

"I am sorry for it," said Saxon. "For my
own part, I should not like to believe that any
Neapolitan bullet had its appointed billet in my
heart to-morrow."

"And yet you risk it."

"That's just the excitement of the thing.
Fighting is like gambling. No man gambles in
the hope of losing, and no man fights in the
hope of being killed; but where would be the
pleasure of either gambling or fighting, if one
placed no kind of value on the stakes?"

The Earl smiled, and made no reply.
Presently Saxon spoke again.

"But I say, Castletowers, a fellow might get
killed, you know; mightn't he?"

"If the castle of Melazzo is half so strong a
place as I have heard it is, I think a good many
fellows will get killed," was the reply.

"Then—then it's my opinion . . . ."

"That the stakes are too precious to be
risked!"

"By Jove, no! but that I ought to have
made my will."

"You have never made one?"

"Never; and, you see, I have so much
money, that I ought to do something useful
with it, in case of anything going wrong. Don't
you think so?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Can you help me to write it ':"

"I, my dear boy? Not for the world. We
should be only sowing the seeds of a fine