OLD HIRAM BLAKE sat in his easy chair on the porch of his small farm. His gnarled hands lay placidly in his lap. The setting sun shone on his wrinkled face, accentuating the deep furrows which time and drudgery had engraven upon it. With closed eyes he was ruminating on his past life with its joys and sorrows and realizing that sorrow had predominated.

What was life all about, anyway? Why had he ever been here and why was there so little information in the world concerning the Beyond?

The “Great Unknown,” most people called it.

True, he believed with all the naivete of a child that the poets knew a great deal about the matter. Was it Tennyson or Wordsworth who said, “There is no death. What seems so is transition.”

He always mixed up those two names.

He remembered someone lending him a book called “Festus,” written by a remarkable English boy, named Bailey. The book on the whole was quite beyond his understanding, but he had come across a quotation which had taken his fancy. It was on Death, and he had committed it to memory. How clear his memory seemed at present! The words ran thus:

That was in the days following his bereavement, when during the lonely evenings he had turned to books for consolation. His eyes were good then and he had read and read. The clergyman in the little red-roofed church around the corner did not seem to be able to answer his questions, and so he had gradually retired within himself and had come to the conclusion that there was no answer.

He had always done his duty as he had seen it and had lent a helping hand to his neighbors as far as he was able. But he had suffered intensely at times and without deserving it as far as he could see.

His wife, Virginia, had died during the early years of their married life, leaving him a son. That boy, now a grown man, was on the high seas, and rarely did father and son meet. His crops had failed many times and often it had been difficult to “make both ends meet.” Loneliness and poverty stood out as great black ghosts which had stalked by his side since early manhood. No loving hand was soothing the closing hours of his life; for although possessed of a certain sturdiness of physique, even yet, he knew instinctively that his eighty years of existence presaged the setting of his sun and that the Grim Reaper was not far away. The housekeeper, now getting supper in the kitchen, was all right and trustworthy, but the domestic life for which his heart had yearned had been of necessity missing and Home, as he had once pictured it, had been his for only a brief period.

Hiram was an honest man—honest in his dealings with his fellowmen and with himself. There was no bitterness in his heart. He merely pondered on the great mystery of being—why he should have had such a life and what there was to come after he had closed his eyes in death.

Sinking deeper and deeper into meditation, it seemed as if he were being loosened from his moorings. A deep peace wrapped its silvery folds around him. He was actually beginning to feel happy. Surely there was joy in the world after all, and he was going to experience it. This sense of well-being was growing stronger and stronger. Then it was that he became aware of the presence of a majestic figure of a Man in whose eyes there shone the glowing fires of Eternal Love; eyes in which the blaze was as soft as the love of a mother for her babe, and yet as virile and strong as those of an Angel.

Touching him on the hand, the Stranger said, “Hiram, look at me. Look deep into my eyes and you shall know all that your heart longs to understand. I am the Great Explainer; I am your own Glorious Self—your Higher Self, who has been with you throughout all your earthly life; has known all your sorrows and cares, sustaining you through all. Happily, your honesty, industry, sense of duty and desire for Truth have kept open the door between us. You did not cast me off, which you might so easily have done unknowingly; and now you shall be rewarded. Come, Hiram.”

Hiram stood on his feet in ecstasy. The eyes grew larger and larger and more luminous. They were not eyes after all; they were portals opening into a stately apartment. And lo! Hiram was in the hall of a Ruler, of Julius, the Roman Governor of a province.

Clad in a Roman toga and sitting at the head of a long table was a man in the prime of life. He was speaking in a stern voice:

“I am tired of all these complaints of the farmers. What do they want now? Let them be poor; it is their lot in life. I have too much more important business of state to attend to. The law under which they work is just; Roman law is always just.”

“But Sire,” a voice interrupted pleadingly, “we have here a petition signed by hundreds of agriculturists in your domain. They plead with you for consideration, for more equitable laws, for mercy, for support. They are desperate in many cases. Will you not listen with sympathy at least to their problems?”

“More pressing duties await me,” replied the Governor, with an impatient gesture of his hand. And once more, the matter was in abeyance.

Hiram stood spell-bound. Where had he seen that haughty figure before? Where had he heard that voice and those words?

They seemed to be coming from his own mouth; he felt the impatience, the lack of understanding which characterised the proud Roman; yet he wanted to plead with the man, to explain how heart-breaking were the conditions under which the farmers labored. Had not he, Hiram Blake, gone through all this? And yet he was Julius the proud Ruler as well. How could it be? In bewilderment, he passed his hand over his forehead and realized he was suddenly tired and uneasy.

Then slowly the scene changed. The council hall melted away into the luxurious drawing-room of an aristocratic home. Soft-shaded lights shed their seductive glow over the rich furnishings. Sitting wearily on a divan was a young matron, beauti- fully but simply clad, waiting, waiting.

For whom?

Julius entered the apartment, but was so engrossed with his thoughts that he hardly saw his wife who eagerly looked up at his entrance. In an abstracted manner and with a proud, stern bearing, he greeted the one who had waited for him so long in loneliness. Underneath his cold manner he sincerely loved his wife, but rarely did he allow the shell of self-centeredness, which he had built around himself, to break down. Affairs of state and a self-imposed pride in his ability to enforce the law prevented him from seeing the slowly pining figure in his home. With a perfunctory kiss and a few words of greeting, he was gone.

Again the scene changed, and poignant grief racked him, body and soul. Gone was all his pride; his superiority had vanished. He was just a lonely, heartbroken man. He, Hiram, was suffering with Julius, in all the intensity of the mental anguish of bereavement when a dearly-loved one is taken, and hopeless regrets wring the heart and mind. Lying in an eternal repose were the bodies of his wife and firstborn. Now he knew where he had missed the mark; he had taken his home for granted, had shut out expressions of love, and now he realised when it was too late that that was really the greatest thing in his life. Too late! Too late! The words rang in his ears and then all went black.

Hiram was himself again. He opened his eyes as from a long sleep disturbed by troubled dreams Again he beheld the glorious-eyed Stranger standing beside him.

“Courage, Hiram. All is well. You are still Hiram Blake; you have merely been permitted to look into the Past in order that you might understand to some extent just why your present life has been as it has. This is a reward earned by you, your self, for a life of service in ancient Rome. Many such Pasts lie behind you. You, as the Eternal Pilgrim, not as Hiram Blake, have lived in ancient Rome, Persia, Egypt, India and in other civilizations which do not now exist, and on continents which lie at present beneath the waves. Steadily, through the ages, with some lapses, you have been developing in character and must inevitably continue to advance in the future until, with all other souls on this planet, you attain to the stature of the Perfect Man, and are liberated from the Wheel of Birth and Death as you know it now. Each life is but a day spent in the Great School of human experience. You were Julius the Roman and now you are Hiram Blake, the American farmer.”

A great light began to dawn upon Hiram. Now he knew that his Virginia of this life had been the wife of Julius, the Roman Governor, and his wife, too; for had not he been Julius also? He understood at last why, when he had first met Virginia Dale, there had been something pathetic and appealing in her eyes as she gazed at him in spite of the strong attraction which both felt and which later ripened into love.

He saw in a flash of intuition why she had been taken from him so early in this life; why he had had to contend with loneliness and poverty and drudgery as a struggling farmer.

“How just are Thy ways, O Father!” he exclaimed involuntarily. “It is we ourselves who decide just what our lives shall be! How wonderfully merciful that we are given opportunities to right old mistakes!”

But he was again aware that he was just poor old Hiram Blake, the farmer, sitting in his rockingchair on the porch, waiting for the supper that was being prepared in the kitchen. He felt, only too keenly, a growing sense of weakness beginning to overpower him. He tried to call for help, but no sound came. Then he thought of his new yet old friend, the Stranger, and glancing upwards, behold, He was there.

“Who am I?” Hiram asked again, wearily.

“You are Hiram Blake, personally, but potentially you are a Mighty Son of God;” and Hiram, his consciousness intensified by contact with the Stranger, understood what was meant. Continuing after a slight pause, the Stranger said:

“Hiram, you are about to make the Great Change; you are going to ‘pass on,’ to ‘die,’ in the words of those who know little or nothing of the meaning of death. You will see that the Great Angel of Death is releasing you from your worn-out body. You have faithfully done your work according to your understanding of it, and that is all that is required of any one personality.”

“Stranger!” thought Hiram, “Nay, this is no stranger; he knows me too well; all my innermost thoughts, all the events of my life and many lives past are as an open book to him; he understands my strength as I have never known it; he is aware of my weaknesses, and yet he shows nothing but Love and Understanding and overwhelming Mercy!

But Hiram uttered no words, content for the time being to let that mystery go unsolved.

The Stranger continued,

“Hiram, you are about to slip out of your body and leave it behind forever. The real you, the soul, will live on, not in some far-off region, but on invisible planes of being, which are surrounding this outer world all the time; the finer body which you will wear you have possessed and used in the inner world all your life. The body you leave behind is but an old garment which you are about to discard as you would an old suit of clothes.”

Interrupting, although listening with rapt attention and a keenness of mentality and alertness which he had not shown for many years, Hiram said:

“But I thought I had to come back again?”

“Not right away,” the Stranger replied. “You will make a long stay in all probability on the other side. Our Father Who is God has arranged our lives much on the plan of a school. You entered the class in that school which your present life pictures when you were born as Hiram Blake; you are now about to enter an inner class-room. There are two such inner class-rooms, and the inner-most we call Heaven. That is the ‘golden chamber of the King’s’ you read about, but you do not enter it immediately.

“But come, Hiram, your teaching will be continued after you have made the transition. All time is ours, and a wonderful treat awaits you! Your Virginia will be the first to greet you when you have passed through the portal men call ‘death.’ There you will find yourself more keenly alive than ever in a world whose beauties and glories will gradually unfold as you progress in purity, faith, love and knowledge.

“When you return in another age, as assuredly you will in order to take another step forward into a higher class, whether you are born as a ruler or a peasant, you will be born with a sympathy for suffering humanity and a keen desire to be of service; you

will have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of the inner planes and the inner life which will lead you to those who possess such information. Come!”

Guided by His hand, invisibly gradually covered Hiram as though with the wings of an Angel.

The sun had set to rise again on the morrow. Hiram’s sun had also gone down, only to rise on a greater morrow. There was no outward sign to show anything of the mighty drama which had been enacted during the last few minutes. All Nature was still, as was Hiram also, in his last sleep. Another door had opened for him, and he had entered willingly.

“Supper is ready, Hiram,” called a shrill voice from the kitchen.

The words fell on unhearing ears. Hiram had passed into a Greater Understanding and the Great Beyond was no longer the “Great Unknown.”