elbow. It was Dorothy's parrot. But what did it mean by this unusual
freak of familiarity? Paul spoke to the bird, which pleased it; and
when he put out his hand to smooth its feathers, the parrot lifted
its wings, and with a loud cackle exhibited a note which had been
carefully tied beneath one of them. Henley relieved the animal of its
burden, and discovered that the note was addressed to himself. When
he looked around again, the parrot had flown away. This is what the
note contained:

GUIR HOUSE.

MY OWN DEAR COMRADE--I call you my own because you are all that I
ever had, but even now the memory of our few brief interviews is
all that is left to me, for I must go without you. So happy was I
when we first met, that I don't mind telling you, since we shall
not meet again, how, in anticipation, I rested in your dear arms
and felt your loving caresses; for you were all the world to me
then--the only world I had ever known--and the break of day seemed
close at hand. But soon the thought of drawing you down into that
awful abyss 'twixt heaven and earth, which has whirled its black
shadows about me for more than a century, seized me, and I could
not willingly make a thrall of the one I loved; and so I leave you
to those for whom you are fitted, while I shall continue my
solitary life as before. You say that you are lonely without me!
But what is your loneliness to mine? I, who never had a comrade;
who never felt the joy of friendship; and who was dazed with the
sudden flush of love, of hunger satisfied, of companionship! Have
you ever felt the want of these, dear Paul? Have you ever known
what it is to be alone--to live in an empty world--and that, not
for a time, but for ages? Yes, you will say, you understand it, and