"Perry Whaley," said the woman firmly, but with sweetness, "it is twenty-two years since I left this house with hate of me in your heart and a degraded name; I was in thought and act a pure woman, though the evidence against me was mountain-high. My sin was that of many women--flirtation. Nothing more, before my God! I trifled with one of your students, a reckless and hot-blooded man, and inspired him with a tyrannous passion. He swore if I would not fly with him to destroy me. One day, the most dreadful of my life, he heard your foot upon the stairs ascending to my chamber, and threw himself into it before you and avowed himself your injurer. Then rose in confirmation of him every girlish folly; I saw myself in your mild eyes condemned, in this community long suspected, and by my own family discarded for your sake. Where could I go but to the author of my sorrows? He became my husband and I am a widow." Judge Whaley stretched out his hand in the direction of his eyes, not upon the old wife at his feet, but toward his son, who had settled into a chair and closed his eyes as if in tired rapture. "Hear me but a moment more," said the kneeling woman. "I was the slave of an ever-jealous maniac; but my heart was still at this fireside with your bowed spirit, and this our son. My husband told me that the way to recover the child was to claim it as his. His motive, I fear, was different--to place me on record as confessedly false and prevent our reunion forever. But I was not wise enough to see it. I only thought you would send my son to me. I waited in my lonely home in Charleston years on years. He came at last, but not too late; my frivolous soul, grown selfish with vanity and disappointment, bent itself before God through the prayers of our son. I am forgiven, Perry Whaley. _I have felt it!_" The old man did not answer, but strained his eyes upon his son. "See there!" he slowly spoke, "Perry is dying. Famished all these years for human love, this excess of joy has snapped the silver cord. Wife, Mary, we have martyred him." It was the typhoid fever which had developed from Perry's wasting vitality. He sank into delirium as they looked at him, and was carried tenderly to his bed. Marion Voss came to nurse him with his mother. She, too, after Perry's departure, had grown serious and followed his example, and was a Methodist. The young zealot sank lower and lower, despite science or prayers. Both churches prayed for him. Negroes and whites united their hopes and kind offices. One morning he was of dying pulse, and the bell in the Episcopal church began to toll. At the bedside all the little family had instinctively knelt, and Perry's mother was praying with streaming eyes, committing the worn-out nature to Heavenly Love, when suddenly Judge Whaley, who had kept his hand on Perry's pulse, exclaimed: "It beats! He lives again. The stimulant, Marion!"