“You’re a gentleman, sir, every inch of you,” he went on, after a few minutes of awkward silence. “I’ve heard charity preached about no end of times, and never knew what it meant before. I suppose you won’t believe it, or think I am capable of feeling it, but I do—I feel mean clear through, though I never would have owned to it before. Here I’ve been for three months and more, making a deal of trouble, being waited upon by your servants as if I was a prince, drinking your wine, and eating all sorts of nice things that I never thought to taste, while you’ve tended me until you’re nigh about worn out yourself. I tell you I feel—mean! There, it’s out—I couldn’t hold it any longer; and if I have to wear a ball and chain all the rest of my life, I shall feel better to think I’ve said it; and I shall never forget to my dying day that there was one man in the world who was willing to do a kindness to his worst enemy.” He had assumed a roughness of tone that had been unusual for the last few weeks, but Earle knew it was done to cover his emotion. It was evident that he felt every word he uttered, and that the confession had cost him a great effort, as his nervousness and pallor testified. It was apparent also that he expected no mercy, as his reference to Botany Bay and the ball and chain plainly showed. Earle pitied him during his long siege of suffering. He was a man of no small amount of intelligence, and had evidently received a moderately good education before he began his career of crime, and if he had started right in life he would, no doubt, have made a smart man. Earle had as yet come to no definite decision as to what course he should pursue regarding him when he should fully recover, and he could not bear to think of it even now. He knew that his sentence, if tried and found guilty, would be a very severe one, and his own sad experience naturally made him incline to the side of mercy. “But, Tom, whatever you may have been in the past, I do not consider that you are my enemy now,” he said, kindly, when he had concluded his excited speech. “But I _am_, sir. I have done you the worst wrong a man can do another—I’ve wronged you in _every_ way—I’m a wretch, and whatever they do with me, it’ll serve me right, and I’ll never open my lips,” he said, excitedly. “Yes, you have wronged me, and I have suffered in your stead the worst disgrace that a man can suffer. But that is all past now; my innocence has been established, and no shadow of sin rests on my name—John Loker’s confession accomplished that.” “But, sir, it could not give you back those three years of your life that—that you lost; you——”