"That was the time for Howard and me to act like men. We were busy, very busy, but we took turns to stand by him, and show that we had not forgotten 'auld lang syne' and boyish days. Poor fellow! he wept then. Well did he know that we would be the last to extenuate his crime, but he saw that we pitied him while we condemned his sin. He spoke the first words of genuine repentance, or what looked like it, then and there. "After his condemnation, when immured in prison walls, dressed in convict garb, and fed on prison fare, we visited him whenever the rules allowed it. We found him quite broken up--thoroughly humiliated, ready to despair of God's mercy as well as man's forgiveness. He was in the depths of trial, all the waves and the billows had gone over him, the deeps had swallowed him up, as the Psalmist poetically and truly says. We could not in conscience say one word that might lessen the weight of his guilt, but we could point him to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin not of one only, but of the whole world. We could tell him that Christ came, not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, to which he promptly added, and from the heart, 'Of whom I am chief.' "Calamity, sorrow, reverses and all the punishments due to iniquity, can never be relied upon to bring men to repentance; but in this case they worked well, and Willing became a new man. It was a great pleasure to us to see the change in his very countenance, wrought out by the inward principle, and that his sorrow, as time went on, was not so much for his punishment and disgrace as for his guilt. He made no effort to get a commutation of his sentence, saying, It was all right; he had deserved that and much more. "Of course our pity was much excited for his poor little wife, who seemed almost heart-broken. My dear Lucy and John's wife, who had never cultivated intimacy with her in their prosperous days, now came forward in true womanly style, and made her feel that she had sisters in heart, whom she had not known. She had no near kindred, and the few relatives she had held aloof. Truly she might say, 'My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore; and my kinsmen stand afar off.' No one offered her help or shelter, of all those who had enjoyed her elegant hospitality. "Immediately upon the conviction of her husband she wrote to Stewart & Gamble, offering to give up all her handsome furniture and pictures, and even her jewels, as a small indemnity for their losses; but they very nobly refused to accept it, advising her to sell and invest the proceeds. John and I, acting under the direction of our wives, who were enthusiastic in their admiration and pity for Olive Willing in her trouble, told her to pack her trunks at once and come to our house, where we had room enough and to spare, and that we would attend to the sale. She could scarcely believe she heard aright, and was full of surprise and gratitude, and, of course, accepted the offer.