on to the store, wet as he was, and the night had been long, and now and then, strange, deep, burning pains, that seemed a mile long, had run from hip to heel, but he had watched the night out--and--and he would never watch again--that was all. He had, in fact, “scuttled his own ship,” but in ignorance, lass! In ignorance, not in villainy. Yes, it was rheumatism first. He hadn’t minded that so very much, because he had the awful pain to fight, but _this_ (again that piteous twist of the lips), _this_ partial paralysis--well there was nothing even to fight now. Had I not seen hope dead in his eye? His head sank low on his breast. I touched my lips to his hand, and whispered, “How you have suffered!” His eyes closed wearily, and he answered lowly: “I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,” then, almost with a sob, he said: “Aye, aye--in very truth my sin hath found me out!” I started almost angrily, exclaiming: “Your sin? What sin? You have loved--at least you have feared God all your life long! His word has ever been upon your lips. You have striven to obey His laws--what sin has found you out?” He raised his head, crying: “And to think I was so blind--so self-satisfied! To think how I tried to keep the boys from going to perdition by way of Sunday ball, and the girls by way of their vanity in their bits of ribbons! The blind ‘leading the blind,’ in good truth! Even when I was stricken I did not understand, until a neighbor made my sin plain to me.” “Ah,” I said, “and had that neighbor removed the beam from his own eye, that he could see so very plainly the mote in yours?” “I do not know,” he answered, “but he said that pride went before a fall. And when I looked a bit surprised he added, ‘you have been eaten up with vanity and puffed up with pride all your life, because of your great strength,’ and oh, lass! lass! I was sore ashamed! Ah, well, I have no strength to sin with now--I am just naught but a useless, old hulk, or what is worse, ‘a derelict!’” “No,” I said, “a ‘derelict’ is a menace and a floating danger to many men--you are no derelict!” But he, shaking his clenched hand above his head in impotent sorrow, went on: “Worse! I’m worse than a danger to men! Men are strong and can save themselves, but here I hang like a mill-stone about the neck of that poor woman there--my wife, and she’ll have to bear the dragging and the weight for years and years. For, mind you, I’m not like to die. The doctors say these things inside of me that they call ‘organs’ are all sound and strong, and that a man lives _by them_, not his legs, and so I’m to sit here rusting away, and watching her grow sick at the sight of me!” Two slow, difficult tears stood chill and unshed in his eyes, and I felt, with a pang, how great must be the storm of sorrow that could cast its spray into those stern, old eyes.