And now, following that irresistible impulse which urges every nature that is upright at heart to refuse at all hazards gratitude which it is conscious of not deserving, I confessed my grievous fault; how I had been resolved to run every risk to gain my liberty; that I had not, it is true, invited the overtures of the ruffian, but nevertheless had permitted them; how I had known of the plot and of the hour when it was to be carried out, and that I did not know why in the last moment the courage to do my part in it had failed me so that I turned my hand against the man whom I had voluntarily admitted as my comrade, and whose accomplice I must necessarily consider myself. The superintendent allowed me to speak to an end, only retaining with a gentle pressure my hand, whenever I attempted to withdraw it. When I ceased speaking, he said--and even now, after so many years, on awaking in the night, I fancy I hear his voice: "My dear young friend, it is not what our fancies, intentions, desires, represent to us as possible or even necessary, not what we believe we can do or ought to do, not what we have resolved to do, but it is what at any given moment we really do, that makes us what we are. The coward believes himself a hero until the moment of trial convicts him of cowardice; the brave man fancies that he will prudently avoid all perils, and plunges headlong into danger as soon as a cry for help reaches his ear. You believed yourself capable of lifting your hand against a defenceless man, and when you saw him attacked by a murderer, you sprang to his assistance. And do not say that you did not know what you were doing; or if you really did not know, you were following the irresistible promptings of your nature, and were just at that moment your real self. I and mine will evermore see in you the man who saved my life at the peril of his own." "You would make me out better than I really am," I murmured. "Even were that so," he answered, "few have my opportunity for knowing that the surest, often the only way to make a man better, is to take him for better than he is. Would to heaven that this secret of my craft were always as easy of employment as with you. And if I can help, as I joyfully trust I can, in refining the noble metal of your nature from the dross with which it may yet be mingled; if I can help to enlighten you in regard to yourself, to light up the path of your life which lies but dark before you, and from which you believe you have--and perhaps really have--wandered; in a word, to make you what you can be, and therefore ought to be--that would be but dealing you out justice in return for the sharp injustice which has brought you here; and I might thus repay the debt of gratitude which I owed you before you set foot in this house, let alone before you preserved for my children their father's life."