“Tom, I want to tell you a little story; you will recognize it, perhaps, as you say your mother is a Christian woman. There was once a Man who was crushed beneath the sins of a world. He wore a crown of thorns, and the purple robe of scorn and derision. His tender flesh was pierced, bruised, and mangled by His enemies, and His only cry was, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ There came a time when I realized that _my_ sins helped to do all this, and I felt something, as you say, as if a ‘millstone had crushed me,’ and as if I could never live in His presence with the memory of it ever in my mind. But I read in His word, ‘Thy sins are remembered no more against thee _forever_; they are _blotted out_.’ The same word tells me to ‘forgive as I am forgiven.’ Of course we cannot actually forget all that we have suffered, nor who was the immediate cause of it, but we can cherish no evil—we can regard and treat as kindly those who have injured us as if it had never been. That is the way I want to ‘blot out’ all the past between you and me. Do you understand me, Tom?” “Yes, sir,” Tom Drake said, in scarcely audible tones, but his face was full of feeling and of an earnest purpose. “May I feel then, that I can trust you _fully_ from this hour?” “You may, sir,” very decidedly the reply came; and, after a moment’s hesitation, he continued, in a resolute tone: “I’ll not waste my breath nor weary you with promises; but, sir, I’ll begin to _live_ from this moment.” “That is right; and here is my hand to seal our compact;” and the young Marquis of Wycliffe grasped the hand of poor degraded Tom Drake as heartily as if he had been another peer of the realm. He had won an enemy—he had conquered a reckless, defiant human heart, with neither sword nor spear, but by the power of love and kindness. Thrice blessed Marion Vance! Out of her sorrow had grown her Christianity, out of her Christianity had grown the education of this noble man, and out of his nobility the salvation of another. Who can estimate the mighty influence of a pure example and faithful precepts? Did she, now looking down upon this scene, realize toward what all the dark and winding path of her desolate life had tended? She had learned to _trust_ while here, where the way was so dark that she could not see; and may we not hope that faith had now ended in sight, and that the joy she had missed on earth was increased a hundred fold in the better world? Neither Earle nor his companion spoke again during the remainder of their drive. Tom Drake went immediately to his rooms when they reached the house, and no one but himself and his Maker knew how he passed that solitary hour that followed his return. Earle gave the reins to a groom, and went to the library to see if there were any letters, but a servant met him on the way and handed him a telegram that had just arrived. It was a cable dispatch from the United States.