"Uncle," said Horace, at last, the words bursting from his lips in an eager paroxysm of defence against himself, and vindication to his own conscience--"Uncle, _I_ did him no harm." "I am very thankful to hear it, Horace," said the Colonel, very gravely; then he made another pause--"unless it will relieve your mind tell me no more," he said, quickly--"only, Horace, remember, you have been very near the grave; perhaps you know yourself that you have been near something more terrible than the grave; you should pause and think now while you can; for every evil intention, as well as for every act of sin, there is pardon with God, for Jesus' sake." He said it simply, but with a solemn, almost judicial gravity. He could not help guessing what had been going on in the troubled spirit beside him, of which he knew so little; he could not help shuddering at the thought of the horrible guilt from which, by accident, as it appeared, and interposition of God, the young man had been unwittingly preserved. God help him!--so young, so wretched, to drag the hideous burden of that remembrance through all his days of life! The deepest pity, even amid his horror, struck the old soldier's noble, innocent heart. He could not comprehend the guilt--but he felt the remorse, with a compassion that was half divine. Horace made no reply--he shrank, in spite of himself, as though he would have crept away morally out of his uncle's presence; for the instant the young man realized, with a desperate force of conviction, the "gulf fixed" between heaven and hell which none can pass over; he felt it in his guilt a thousand times more deeply than the pure heart beside him did, in its tender depths of pity. He lay still in his weakness, with a mortified consciousness of humiliation and inferiority, insufferable to his arrogant spirit. Then it occurred to him that there was still one thing, by which he might drag himself up fictitiously to that higher elevation, which he recognized vaguely in his downfall, and envied, though he knew it not. He turned once more towards the watcher by his bed with a sudden movement, which was so quick as to give him pain. "You think very badly of me," he said, hastily; "but I have got something to tell you--something to tell Roger Musgrave, which will remedy one evil at least, and change, more than you can suppose, his position in the world." The Colonel waved his hand, with the action of a man who knows what another is about to say. "My dear boy," he said, compassionately, "I am grieved that you cannot have the satisfaction of doing, at least, this piece of justice--but you are too late. The Kenlisle attorney, hearing of your connection with Musgrave, and of some promise you had made him when you heard of your father's illness, sent to beg an interview with Roger and Sir John, and confessed the whole transaction. That matter has been arranged while you have been ill."