They kept on shouting from time to time, and the answering voice came slowly nearer. The darkness was on them before they saw a man, bending under a heavy burden, pass out of the black shadows into the open space about the fire. Davies and Miller ran up to him, lifted the sergeant's helpless body from his back, and lowered it gently to the ground.

"He's not dead!" the man panted-"at least I think not. The other horse-is done for!"

"Why, my man," said Lethbridge, kindly, "you've nearly killed yourself!" He passed his arm around the bushman, who swayed on his feet, and leaned heavily against him for a moment, then looked apologetically in his face and tried to speak-thickly and heavily like a drunken man.

"Don't worry yourself!" said Lethbridge. "Now-lie down on this blanket-let me get the saddle under your head-so!" Then he turned aside to the other men, who were busying themselves with Waite.

"How is he?"

pocket-flask, before handing the latter to Davies.

"Try and drink this," he said, coming back to the man he had left. He slipped his arm gently under the shoulders and raised the head, so that he could hold the draught to the parched lips. "Here, my poor fellow!"

The man drank-with some murmured words of thanks, so faint and broken that they went to Lethbridge's heart. He raised him in his arms and bent over him, so close that his burning cheek almost touched the haggard face, and said, in a fierce, shamefaced whisper:

"You ... you've saved us and . . . God bless you!"

all...

The sergeant came to in due coursewas dosed with brandy and extract of beef, then fed on more solid victuals, and finally rolled up in a blanket, and left to sleep the sleep of the just. The other man, too, dropped off to sleep after a while, holding Lethbridge's hand, and Lethbridge sat and watched him with a strange tumult surging through his brain. He dozed now and then and dreamed strange dreams, and then roused himself with a start, and remained awake for what seemed weary hours and hours. Then, all of a sudden, as he thought, he looked up, and saw, by the dying firelight, the sergeant bending over the sleeping man beside him.

"What are you doing?" he asked, in a sharp whisper.

Waite raised himself noiselessly, and came closer to Lethbridge.

"Captain," he said, in a low voice trembling with excitement-"We may get it yet!"

"Get what?"

"We've lost the other one-but-if this is the man I think, there's two hundred pounds reward out for him. I've got the description here, but it

He had laid his hand on his captain's arm in his agitation, but Lethbridge shook it off, and recoiled from him in disgust.

"Hang it, man! don't you know he saved your life?"

"Didn't you guess who he was, sir? I did, the minute I set eyes on him." Lethbridge seldom swore, but he did it then.

"I don't want to know who he is. He's not the man we're after, and that's enough for me. Why, there isn't one of us would have the chance of getting back alive but for him. And as for you! Do you know it's nearly cost him his own life? Do you think you're worth that?"

He

Waite shrank away in silence. could not see Lethbridge's face clearly, but the tone cowed him. In the heat of passion the young man had spoken louder than he meant. He felt a hand touch his-the man was sitting up and looking at him.

"Do you know-?" came a faint whisper in the stillness.

"Hush! Don't tell me anything. I don't want to know."

There was a low sob in the dark, and Lethbridge felt his hand lifted and pressed to the man's lips.

"Come, now!" he said, gently"don't!" Then after a pause, "Whoever you may be, you're a noble fellow. I'll never forget. Do you feel better now? Go to sleep again. That's what I'm going to do."

And he did, after strolling over to inspect Waite, who had coiled himself up once more, and was snoring-perhaps dreaming of the £200 reward.

He kept his word, and marched with them all next day, leaving them within easy reach of a lumber-camp, whence they could get guides to the nearest township. He walked by Lethbridge's stirrup, and they talked now and then -of things which concerned neither the

captain of police nor the escaped political prisoner as such-but both of them as human souls who found the world beautiful. And, late in the afternoon, the time came to part. They were ahead of the rest, in the winding bush trail-out of sight of all but one, and he was Mason, who never wondered at anything his captain said or did.

The sunburnt man stood still and raised his hand.

"You can find your way from here," he said. "If you go as far as that dead tree you'll see a stream; and if you follow that stream down you'll find the camp." He stopped-and then, without looking up at Lethbridge, he laid his hand a little timidly on the horse's mane, and said, "Good-bye!"

Lethbridge slipped the reins over his arm, and put his two hands on the man's shoulders and looked into his face.

"Good-bye. I can't say what I want. ... God bless you!"

I believe we

"Amen! and that same to you! I'll never see you again." "I don't know that. shall meet-somewhere." "Ah! God grant it! Where you'll not be police captain, nor I-”

"Never mind. Good-bye-till then!" And so the forest swallowed him up without a trace, save a print or two of his bare feet on the leaf mould. And Lethbridge rode on like one in a dream. When, later on, Waite approached the subject, he fiercely bade him hold his tongue.

The same advice, in substance, was given some months later, by a certain officer to whom the sergeant tentatively revealed the story in the hope of working injury to a man he had never loved. That officer said he didn't want to hear anything about it; but supposing a man had acted as Waite represented Lethbridge to have done-why, it was the only way a gentleman could act under the circumstances. And if

Prince Bismarck, who understood how to use the press to advance his own affairs more frequently and skilfully than any statesman of modern times, repeatedly expressed himself in a very disapproving manner concerning the political activity of what we will call its excitable portion. True, there is a wide distinction between his "We'll let them shriek without troubling ourselves about it," and, "We must pay for the windows our press break." While the former remark was made to a diplomat who was complaining of the violent attacks of the German press, which increased the difficulty of reaching a friendly understanding, the second admits the fact that, though individuals may ignore the attitude of the press, the community must be always more or less affected by it, and, during the progress of negotiations between the governments of various Powers, this may easily exert a baneful influence, nay, even be capable of compromising the safety of a country.

By this acknowledgment the importance of the press as an organ of public opinion is recognized, but, at the same time, the line is drawn, which should not be passed by a sagacious press in its discussion of foreign affairs. True, this does not settle the question whether it is the office of the press to record the opinion of the majority, that is, literally to act as its organ, or to suggest to the majority the opinions which it-the press-believes to be correct, that is, to serve as an educator. The separation of these two functions is rendered especially difficult at the present time, because the individual press organs sometimes serve a party, sometimes personal interests, and it is •Translated for The Living Age by Mary J. Safford.

impossible for the great majority of readers to know whether the views presented are in behalf of such interests or have their source and foundation in what seems, to impartial editors, most beneficial to the majority. In estimating the influence of the press upon relations to foreign countries, it will, therefore, be advisable to pay more attention to the results of its attitude than to the reasons for it. To do the former thoroughly is the more necessary, because, in recent years, the German press appears to have lost the sense of responsibility, which is and must be associated with expressions of opinion, if they are to have any other purpose than that of humoring and inciting the passions of the moment.

Before the outbreak of the SpanishAmerican war, the attitude of the German press toward England, though not unfriendly, was animated by the idea that Germany must not only expect no encouragement from England in her industrial, commercial and colonial development, but must even be prepared to encounter in her a determined rival. The maritime superiority of Great Britain was making itself felt disagreeably, both directly and indirectly, and could not fail to awaken in all who judged the situation correctly-and this was probably, in this case, the majority of Germans-the feeling that any lightening of the pressure thus exerted could only prove advantageous to German interests.

Nothing, therefore, could have been more natural than that the German press, at the outbreak of the war, should have been, if not friendly, at least neutral toward the United States, but precisely the reverse occurred. While in England, where the great majority of the population thought and

felt precisely the same as in Germany, concerning the progress of the United States, the press, with admirable recognition of the situation and enviable discipline, wheeled about, and accomplished the result that public opinion in the United States beheld, in the formerly hated rival, the friend whose attitude had preserved America from European complications and aided the successful completion of the war. The German press, on the other hand, in spite of the absolutely correct, neutral and friendly course of the German Government, managed to arouse, not only in Washington, but throughout the entire country, the belief that, during the war, Germany had been hostile to the United States, and was only prevented by England from actively interfering in favor of Spain. It required the utmost exercise of conciliatory and prudent measures on the part of the Foreign Office of the Empire, which received wholly unintentional assistance from the boundless vituperation of the English and American yellow press, to dispel this suspicion in some degree and make good the mischief wrought by the press. Yet it must be established as a result of the German press campaign during the American war with Spain that, instead of lessening by supporting England's rival, the English oppression which burdened us, the press managed to make them friends, and thus loaded us with two opponents instead of one. The return for the attitude of the English press, during the Spanish war, is the attitude which the American press maintains during England's conflict with the South African republics. In this case, also, the American press, aside from the Irish and ultra democratic organs which are without appreciable importance to the whole body, has taken the right path, while in Germany the press again, by its course, not only rendered the task of its own gov

ernment more difficult, but caused a great and, in some instances, not wholly unjustifiable excitement in England. The result of this procedure, apart from a vehement press controversy, has been the attempt of prominent daily papers and magazines to effect an understanding, at the cost of Germany, between England and France. And, if we seek for the motive of the attitude of the German press in both wars, it can scarcely be found except in an unseasonable sentimentality and the total misconception of the growth and meaning of imperialistic tendencies in England as well as in the United States.

In the preceding paragraphs the general attitude of the German press in two critical situations has been subjected to examination, but the picture becomes still more gloomy when we consider the extreme agrarian and the anti-Semitic press. Not only in their polemics against the United States and England have they seemed to try "to out-Herod Herod," but they have also done their best to embroil us in the internal political department with AustroHungary, and, in our commercial relations with that country, Russia, England, Italy, the United States, and it may be boldly added, all the rest of the world. If there is method in this madness, it can only be found in the hope that, by barricading the German frontiers by means of a customs war, eventually an actual war with one or several of the maritime powers may cause an increase in the prices of agricultural products and a return of the laborers from manufactures to farming, thus fulfilling the agrarian dream of the future, to which must be sacrificed the trade, manufactures, prosperity and position of Germany among the Powers of the world. Already voices are being raised in the United States and Italy, which not only show the results of such an attitude in questions of business and commerce, but also seek