END OF BOOK I.




BOOK II.

"_Necessity, like light's electric force,
Is in ourselves and all things, and no more
Without us than within us_--."




CHAPTER I.


The bells have solemn sound that from old belfries ring the passing of
the year in the hearing of thousands; but perhaps it is a more solemn
thing to watch and tell the birth of a new year by the march of stars
that look down out of their purple void upon a land of trackless snow.
If ceremony and the united sentiment of many hearts have impressive
effect, they yet tend to lighten the burden of individual
responsibility, which presses with weight, like the weight of the
atmosphere upon a vacuum, when a man tries to grapple with his own soul
in solitude.

Alec Trenholme was spending another wakeful night in the living-room of
his small railway station. Winter lay around him. For a month the
blueberry flats and bramble thickets had been wholly lost under the