"'I do not see Why God should e'en permit _some things_ to be; When He is Love; But I _can_ see, Though often dimly, through the mystery, His hand above. "'I do not know Where falls the seed that I have tried to sow With greatest care; But I shall know The meaning of each waiting hour below Sometime, somewhere.' "Selected with tender sympathy. "Your friend, "JENNIE CASSEDAY." CHAPTER VI. In conclusion it will not be out of place to glance for a moment backward and to call attention definitely to some plain facts. Mr. Holcombe inherited from his parents a diversely perverse and bad nature. Already in his childhood he was cross, irritable, spiteful. In his boyhood his temper was savage and revengful. In his manhood he took the life of a fellowman. He inherited the love of drink from his father, who was a confirmed drunkard before the child was born; and the child himself was drunk before he was twelve years old. He was given to sensuality from his boyhood. His education was not good--as far as the educating power of daily example goes, it was bad, positively bad, continually bad. His associations outside of home were, for the most part, of the worst sort. His boyish companions were given to gambling, pilfering, fighting, and in all these things they called him chief. But the companionship of boys did not long satisfy him and already before he was fifteen, he drank and gambled with grown men in the bar-rooms of the village. He had an impulsive sympathy for helpless suffering when it was before his eyes. He had a vague, faint fear of the Power that makes for righteousness, so that in his youth he made three or four ineffectual efforts to get the mastery of his evil nature and to become better. He provided well for his family in meat and drink and the like. He was generous to his friends. When this is said, about all is said on that side. Apart from these things he gave himself up for forty years to the indulgence of all his passions without let or hinderance from parental authority, domestic bonds, fear of God or regard for man. So that the adverse power of evil habit, strengthened by forty years of indulgence, was superimposed upon the moral helplessness of an inherited bad nature made worse by bad education and bad associations.