“This year in which I write, a great change has come over me, and my heart has been softened and touched at last with human sympathy. The force which has affected me is not any book nor sermon, but your example of goodness and your charity towards all men. In spite of the general judgment on me, which has been fully merited, I have seen that you do not shun me, but rather have gone out of your way to countenance me, and I have heard that you speak kindly of me. It is not my nature to say much; it is not yours to receive praise; but I wish you to know you have made me a new man. “It seemed to me, however, dangerous that I should begin to distribute my means openly among charities, as I was inclined to do, since I might pass from hardness to pride and be charged with ostentation, as I had been once with miserliness, with sad justice in both cases. “So it came to me that, still retaining and maintaining my character for meanness--as a punishment for my past ill-doing and a check on vanity--I would gradually use my capital in the private and anonymous aid of respectable people who are passing through material adversity, and the help of my native city, so that my left hand should not know what my right was doing. This plan I have now, at this date, pursued for six months, and hope to continue to my death, and I did not know so great joy could be tasted by any human being as God has given to me. And now, to all the goodness you have shown me, will you add one favour, to wind up my affairs as follows:-- “(1) Provide for my housekeeper generously. “(2) Give a liberal donation to the other servant. “(3) Bury me quietly, without intimation to any one. “(4) Distribute all that remains, after paying every debt, as you please, in the help of widows, orphans, and young men. “(5) Place a packet, marked 'gilt-edged securities,' in my coffin. “And consider that, among all your good works, this will have a humble place, that you saved the soul of--Your grateful friend, “Samuel Dodson.” “What Dodson has done with his money, Mr. Greatheart I don't know; all the securities together don't amount to £5,000. He seems to have been living on an annuity.” “His wealth is here, Welsby, in this packet of cancelled cheques, two hundred and eighty-seven, which go with him to the other side; and I tell you, Welsby, I know no man who has invested his money so securely as Samuel Dodson. See, read that top check.” “To Goldbeater, London, £10,000. Why, the draft I got for playgrounds was on that bank, and the date corresponds. Curious. “Eh? What? You don't mean to say that this man we slanged and... looked down on was....” “Yes, Zaccheus was Sam Dodson.” SAVED BY FAITH I “So you have agreed to accept seven-and-six-pence in the pound from Hatchard?” Oxley said in his slow, quiet manner, as he smoked with his two friends after luncheon at the Club. “I could not attend the meeting, but I hear that the affairs showed badly.”