But when a little time had passed away, Forsyth learned to love the very shadow of Mary Melville’s eldest born, and cherished her as she sprang up in graceful girlhood, as though she had been the child of his own old age, the daughter of his heart. The solitary stranger was soon better known to the hearers of the Rev. Halbert Melville, for he lingered about the place as though its very stones were dear to him. Forsyth had made no friends in his long season of sinful wealth and prosperity--gay acquaintances he had had in plenty who joined his guiltiness, and called themselves friends, until the new course of folly and excess on which he entered with headlong avidity after Mary Melville rejected him, had dissipated his substance and made him poor, and then the forlorn sufferer in his obscure apartment found out the true value of these his heartless companions’ friendship. But now, a new man among friends on whose unworldly sincerity he could rely without a shadow of a doubt, his very worldly prospects brightened, and gathering the remnants of his broken fortunes, he began now to use the remainder of God’s once abundant gifts with a holy prudence, that made his small substance more valuable a thousand fold, than the larger income that had been so lavishly expended in the long years of his guilt and darkness; a changed man was he in every particular, the talent which made him foremost in the ranks of infidelity was laid upon God’s altar now, a consecrated thing, and men who knew him first after his great changes, marvelled at his strange humility, so unlike the world in its simple lowliness. When he was told of the sinful and erring he bent his head and blamed them not, for the remembrance of his own sins filled him with gentlest charity, and when deed of mercy was to be done, that needed earnest exertion and zealous heart, the mild and gentle Forsyth was ever foremost delighting in the labour. The threads of our tale have nearly run out; and we have but, as knitters say, to take them up ere we finish. Our Halbert Melville is famed and honoured; a wise and earnest minister, faithful and fervent in his pulpit, unwearying in daily labour. His gentle Mary becomes the sweet dignity of her matronhood well, rejoicing in the happy guardianship of these fair children. Nor is the other Mary less blessed: the liberal heavens have rained down gifts upon them all; seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, have passed over their heads; but death and sorrow, making sad visits to many homes around them, and leaving havoc and desolation in their train, have never in their stern companionship come across these peaceful thresholds. Now we must draw the veil, lest we should feel the hot breath of sickness in these happy households, or see the approaching shadow of grief darkening their pleasant doorways.