Now, for the first time, I felt like a man to whom there is a possibility of being made whole. Her father might hunt me to death, the law might lay hold on me, the fair reputation under which I had shielded myself might be torn and scattered to the winds; but for all that I was safe, I was myself, the true Max Urquhart, a grievous sinner; yet no longer unforgiven or hopeless. "_I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance_." That line struck home. Oh, that I could strike it home to every miserable heart as it went to mine. Oh! that I could carry into the utmost corners of the earth the message, the gospel which Dallas believed in, the only one which has power enough for the redemption of this sorrowful world--the gospel of the forgiveness and remission of sins. While she talked to me--this my saint, Theodora--Dallas himself might have spoken, apostle-like, through her lips. She said, when I listened in wonder to the clearness of some of her arguments, that she hardly knew how they had come into her mind, they seemed to come of themselves; but they were there, and she was _sure_ they were true. She was sure, she added, reverently, that if the Christ of Nazareth were to pass by Rockmount door this day, the only word He would say unto me, after all I had done, would be:--"Thy sins are forgiven thee--rise up and walk." And I did so. I went out of the house an altered man. My burthen of years had been lifted off me for ever and ever. I understood something of what is meant by being "born again." I could dimly guess at what they must have felt-who sat at the Divine feet, clothed and in their right mind, or who, across the sunny plains of Galilee, leaped, and walked, and ran, praising God. I crossed the moorland, walking erect, with eyes fixed on the blue sky, my heart tender and young as a child's. I even stopped, child-like, to pluck a stray primrose under a tree in a lane, which had peeped out, as if it wished to investigate how soon spring would come. It seemed to me so pretty--I might never have seen a primrose since I was a boy. Let me relate the entire truth--she wishes it. Strange as it may appear, though hour by hour brought nearer the time when I had fixed to be at Rockmount, to confess unto a father that I had been the slayer of his only son--still that day was not an unhappy day. I spent it chiefly out of doors on the moorlands, near a way-side public-house, where I had lodged some nights, drinking in large draughts of the beauty of this external world, and feeling even outer life sweet, though nothing to that renewed life which I now should never lose again. Never--even if I had to go next day to prison and trial, and stand before the world a convicted homicide. Nay, I believe I could have mounted the scaffold amidst those gaping thousands that were once my terror, and die peacefully in spite of them, feeling no longer either guilty or afraid.