A cry, almost wild and quite uncontrollable, broke from the young man's lips; he could not reply to the question in any other fashion.

"Be calm," said Mr. Lincoln, almost sternly; "and hear what I have to say. I am doing weakly and foolishly, perhaps; and I am not sure that I am doing rightly :-I do forgive you, however. Stay," he continued, as the bewildered young man began to pour out broken words of fervent thanks; 66 you have not me to thank for this. You have had a powerful intercessor; and it is right you should know that you are indebted to my. to Mrs. Lincoln for this narrow escape. And now," he went on, after a moment's pause, "having yielded up my better judgment to these womanish persuasions, I must not forget that I still have a duty to perform to society. I dare not turn you adrift, to injure others as you have injured me. You must, for a time at least, remain in my service and under my eye."

"I will serve you in the meanest capacity, sir," said the astonished and relieved clerk.

"And what good would that do me?" asked Mr. Lincoln. "No; you must continue to fill the post you have occupied, and are supposed still to occupy. Mark me," he continued; "the knowledge of your guilt is confined to our two selves and to my wife. She will not divulge it. I will, as you may well suppose, keep it secret for my credit's sake. Whatever inconveniences may possibly arise from your misconduct, I will bear. You will not speak of the matter, I suppose. So that no one in the establishment or out of it will be able to taunt you with your sin, or me with my folly. You understand this ?"

66

"I am not sure, sir," stammered the bewildered young man; you cannot mean, sir, that I am still to be cashier and

"It is the only thing I can do for you."

"I will give up my salary, sir. Only give me sufficient to provide the barest necessaries; and I will serve you faithfully in time to come.'

"No, this would not do. It would only be putting new temptations before you. You will retain your position, with its pecuniary advantages. The only way in which you can show your real penitence is by abandoning at once and for ever the cause which has so nearly been your ruin. I ask for no protestations; I will receive none. Actions

speak louder than words. 'Go, and sin no more; lest a worse thing come unto thee.'

And the pardoned, humbled young man went out from his employer's presence.

"I have done a foolish thing, I fear," pondered Mr. Lincoln within himself, when he was alone. “And yet I am I think my Lord would have done it."

not sure.

SCENE THE THIRD

"I do not understand this, sir. We are entire strangers to you. Why-why do you load my mother and her family with such unexpected benefits?"

The speaker was young, and his countenance as he spoke showed marks of the same extreme surprise and evident agitation which his words and the tone in which they were uttered, manifested. He was respectably clad; yet his garments were in places threadbare, and exhibited tokens of careful preservation. He looked like one who knew that when these were quite worn out, he would find a difficulty in replacing them. He was tall and well-formed, and he had an intelligent countenance; but he was thin and sallow,-probably from poor living, anxiety, or overwork-possibly from these three causes combined.

The scene was in a private room in a London hotel, very handsomely furnished. The temporary guest or occupier of the suite of apartments of which this was one. was able, as it appeared, to meet the heavy charges of such a brief sojourn in London as his business or pleasure demanded.

He was a man not much past the prime of life. He was scarcely over fifty, although he looked older. He was bronzed by exposure; for he had but recently landed in England after a long voyage. His hair was partially gray; and there was a restless activity in his eye which seemed to indicate that though now confined within the narrow bounds of four walls, his mind and thoughts were taking a far wider range.

It was a wintry day. Snow was falling in the streets, and turning into uncomfortable mud; and the few passengers who were venturing abroad, in that rather dul] but very aristocratic quarter of London, hurried on, well booted and cloaked, beneath the shelter of their umbrellas. Within the room, a large fire burned in the large grate.

and by this, on opposite sides, the only two occupants of the room were sitting.

They had been sitting together more than an hour, the younger man having, the day before, received a request that he would call, at a time fixed, on the traveller at the hotel. And during the interview, the young man had been invited and indeed urged by the elder to give words to some part of his past history. It was a story of changes and reverses-not an uncommon story in this changing world of sin and sorrow; but it was an affecting story, notwithstanding. The young man was the eldest son of a family brought up in affluence. He had two brothers some years younger than himself, scarcely out of boyhood, indeed; and three sisters, one of whom was sadly afflicted in person. Ten years before the date of this interview, the father of the family died suddenly, leaving considerable property in the power and management of an executor and executrix. The executrix was the widow of the deceased; the executor was a professional friend. widow, bowed down with grief at her heavy loss, yielded the entire management of the property to this friend. The friend was fraudulent, and the family was ruined. This was the young man's story, told briefly.

The

"I think I read some account of this unhappy affair a few months ago in a very old newspaper which accidentally fell into my hands," said the stranger (we take up a little thread of the previous hour's conversation): "it must have been a very old paper, I suppose; for it happened a good while ago, you say."

"It was eight years ago that the knowledge of our ruin broke suddenly upon us," replied the young man.

"And since then,-pardon my inquisitiveness, for it is not altogether without a motive,-and since then?"

"Since then, sir, we have done the best we have been able. My mother has been wonderfully supported by the consolations of the gospel; for she is a Christian, sir: she believes and rests on the promises of the Bible."

"I am glad to hear it; you interest me more and more; for I hope I may say, I, too, am a Christian;' and I am sure God's promises are not empty words. But I interrupt you; please to go on." So the stranger spoke.

"As soon as we found that our property was gone," continued the younger man, we removed into a small house; my second sister obtained a situation as governess; and I

found a clerkship among my father's old connections,— indeed in the very house in which he was principal before he retired from business."

The stranger perceptibly started; but he did not further interrupt the speaker.

"This," continued the young man, "enabled us to live; first, to send my brothers to a cheaper school than that from which my mother had been obliged to remove them, and afterwards to put them into respectable situations; and my eldest sister takes care of my mother and my almost helpless sister. We have not really wanted, sir," added the speaker, as though jealous lest he should be suspected of painting a fictitious picture of domestic distress.

"I thank you for your frankness," said the stranger, who seemed greatly moved; "and now I will tell you why I have sent for you. I have heard all this before; but I wished to have it corroborated by yourself; and now I have only to place these "-he removed a paperweight which had firmly held on to the table several bank notes of large amount-" in your hands, and my first errand to England will be accomplished. Take them up, take them home, and give them to your mother."

And then followed the natural, startled, and agitated question from the younger man, already quoted, prefaced by the remark,-" We are entire strangers to you, sir."

"Not entire strangers. I have practised a little deceit upon you, Mr. Lincoln, in introducing myself to you under a name that does not really belong to me. But your mother will remember the name of Falloden-my real name. Tell her from me, that the seed she sowed nearly thirty years ago, has, as I hope, by God's blessing, brought forth some fruit; and that if she will receive the visit of a grateful man whom she was the means of saving from both temporal and spiritual ruin, that saved man will be but too happy to furnish another illustration to the inspired precept Cast thy bread upon the waters; for thou shalt find it after many days.'

A GREAT DIFFERENCE, AND WHAT PRODUCED IT. "DOST thou know what's come over Jack Bolland, Tom? He has not been like the same man for the last two or three weeks."

The speaker was George Firth, and the man to whom he said this was Thomas Oliver. They were shopmates working at the same bench in a machine-making establishment in one of the principal towns in the West Riding of Yorkshiro. The man respecting whom the question was asked, John Bolland, was one of their fellow workmen, who worked a little distance from them.

Bolland was one of those men who always make themselves prominent in a workshop. Any one, indeed, passing through the establishment casually could scarcely have failed to single him out for special notice. He was above the average height, and his ample chest and brawny arms indicated that he was endowed with unusual muscular strength, whilst his broad, expressive countenance, with the deep lines which were marked in it, told that, for good or evil, he was a man of resolute and indomitable will. A few of his fellow-workmen liked him, but he was by no means liked generally. Proud of his strength, he was overbearing and quarrelsome. He was always ready for a fight, and there was scarcely a man in the shop disposed that way with whom he had not tried his strength, nor was he less feared for his keen, biting sarcasm. Rough, practical jokes were too frequently played off by the men against each other, and no one was more ready to take part in such jokes than Bolland; but, as is most commonly the case with such men, no one was less willing to take them good-humouredly when directed against himself. If he did not resent them immediately-which he often did-he never rested till he had got what he called full satisfaction: and that generally meant that he repaid what was done to him with tenfold interest. To complete the picture, it may be added, that he was fond of drink, and that he regarded with the utmost contempt such as were strictly sober, and still more the very few who were religious men. There was not a man in the shop who could do more work than he could, when he liked, or do it better; but the foreman often complained that, take the week through, there was hardly a man who did less.

For the last month there had certainly been a marked difference in Bolland's whole demeanour. During all that time his loud, uproarious laugh, which had so often resounded above all the rattle and whirr of the machinery, had never once been heard. He looked serious and thoughtful, and he kept closely to his work-just as closely