But when you assume that my recovery has been a gradual process, you are
wrong. You will think me more than ever deranged; but I assure you that
it has been brought about, not by long strivings, but suddenly--without
preparation of mine--_and by the immediate hand of our dead brother_.

Yes; you shall have the whole tale. The first effect of the news of
Harry's death in October last was simply to stun me. You may remember
how once, years ago when we were children, we rode home together across
the old Racecourse after a long day's skating, our skates swinging at
our saddle-bows; how Harry challenged us to a gallop; and how, midway,
the roan mare slipped down neck over crop on the frozen turf and hurled
me clean against the face of a stone dyke. I had been thrown from
horseback more than once before, but somehow had always found the earth
fairly elastic. So I had griefs before Harry died and took some rebound
of hope from each: but that cast repeated in a worse degree the old
shock--the springless brutal jar--of the stone dyke. With him the sun
went out of my sky.

I understand that this torpor is quite common with men and women
suddenly bereaved. I believe that a whole week passed before my brain
recovered any really vital motion; and then such feeble thought as I
could exert was wholly occupied with the desperate stupidity of the
whole affair. If God were indeed shaping the world to any end, if any
design of His underlay the activities of men, what insensate waste to
quench such a heart and brain as Harry's!--to nip, as it seemed out of
mere blundering wantonness, a bud which had begun to open so generously:
to sacrifice that youth and strength, that comeliness, that enthusiasm,
and all for nothing! Had some campaign claimed him, had he been spent
to gain a citadel or defend a flag, I had understood. But that he