"I have made up my mind," he said, "while I was thinking--oh! I had plenty to think about and plenty of time to do my thinking in. Well, I have made up my mind. Mother, this is no country for me any longer. After what has happened I must go. You two go on living together, just for company, but I shall go--I shall go to America. There's always an opening, I am told, in America, for fellows who are not afraid of work. Cleverness tells there. A man isn't kept down because he's had a misfortune. What is there against me, after all? Character gone, eh? Well, if you come to that, I don't deny that appearances were against me. I could explain, however. "But there nobody cares about character nor what you've done here"--(this remarkable belief is widely spread concerning the colonies, as well as the United States)--"it's what can you do? not, what have you done? Very well. I mean to go to America, mother. I shall polish up the shorthand and pick up the French grammar again. I mean to get rich now. Oh, I've sown my wild oats! Then you'll both come out to me, and then we'll be married; and, Lily, we'll have a most splendid time!" V. Five years later Lily sat one Sunday morning in the same lodgings. The poor old mother was gone, praying her with her last breath not to desert the boy. But of Charley not a word had come to her--no news of any kind. She was quite alone--in those days she was generally alone; she had kept her place at the post-office, but everybody knew of her trouble, and somehow it made a kind of barrier between herself and her sister clerks. The sorrows of love are sacred, but when they are mixed up with a criminal and a prison there is a feeling--a kind of a feeling--as if, well, one doesn't like somehow to be mixed up with it. Lily was greatly to be pitied, no doubt; her lover had turned out shameful; but she ought to have given up the man long before he got so bad. She was alone. The church bells were beginning to ring. She thought she would go to church. While she considered this point, she heard a woman's step on the stairs, and there was a knock at the door. It was a nurse or probationer, dressed in the now familiar garb--a young nurse. "You are Lily Chesters?" she asked. "There is a patient just brought in to the London Hospital who wants to see you. He is named Charley, he says, and will give no other name. He wrote your address on paper. 'Tell her,' he said, 'that it is Charley.'" Lily rose quietly. "I will go to him." "He is your brother?" "He is my lover. Is he ill?" "He is very ill. He came in all in rags, dirty and penniless--he is very ill indeed. Prepare yourself. He is dying of pneumonia." I told you before what they call it. Lily sat at the bedside of the dying man. "It is all over," he whispered. "I have reformed, Lily. I have quite turned over a new leaf. I have now resolved to taking the pledge. Kiss me, dear, and tell me that you forgive me."