One day, as his wife was doing some little thing for him, he took her hand in his feeble grasp, and pressing it to his face, wet with the tears of reviving manhood, said: "We might have been happy together, Letty, if I had but known how much you were worth, and how little I was worth myself!--Oh me! oh me!" He burst into an incontrollable wail that tortured Letty with its likeness to the crying of her baby. "Tom! my own darling Tom!" she cried, "when you speak as if I belonged to you, it makes me as happy as a queen. When you are better, you will be happy, too, dear. Mary says you will." "O Letty!" he sobbed--"the baby!" "The baby's all right, Mary says; and, some day, she says, he will run into your arms, and know you for his father." "And I shall be ashamed to look at him!" said Tom. An hour or so after, he woke from a short sleep, and his eyes sought Letty's watching face. "I have seen baby," he said, "and he has forgiven me. I dare say it was only a dream," he added, "but somehow it makes me happier. At least, I know how the thing might be." "It was true, whether it was but a dream or something more," said Mary, who happened to be by. "Thank you, Mary," he returned. "You and Letty have saved me from what I dare not think of! I could die happy now--if it weren't for one thing." "What is that?" asked Mary. "I am ashamed to say," he replied, "but I ought to say it and bear the shame, for the man who does shamefully ought to be ashamed. It is that, when I am in my grave--or somewhere else, for I know Mary does not like people to talk about being in their graves--you say it is heathenish, don't you, Mary?--when I am where they can't find me, then, it is horrid to think that people up here will have a hold on me and a right over me still, because of debts I shall never be able to pay them." "Don't be too sure of that, Tom," said Mary, cheerfully. "I think you will pay them yet.--But I have heard it said," she went on, "that a man in debt never tells the truth about his debts--as if he had only the face to make them, not to talk about them: can you make a clean breast of it, Tom?" "I don't exactly know what they are; but I always did mean to pay them, and I have some idea about them. I don't think they would come to more than a hundred pounds." "Your mother would not hesitate to pay that for you?" said Mary. "I know she wouldn't; but, then, I'm thinking of Letty." He paused, and Mary waited. "You know, when I am gone," he resumed, "there will be nothing for her but to go to my mother; and it breaks my heart to think of it. Every sin of mine she will lay to her charge; and how am I to lie still in my grave--oh, I beg your pardon, Mary." "I will pay your debts, Tom, and gladly," said Mary, "if they don't come to much more than you say--than you think, I mean." "But, don't you see, Mary, that would be only a shifting of my debt from them to you? Except for Letty, it would not make the thing any better."