“By showing you Himself, señor Englishman,—Himself, the God of all comfort, the Saviour from sin and sorrow, the Lord who binds up the broken in heart;” and the worn, bronzed, weather-beaten face kindled and glowed at the words. Walter asked in surprise, “Where—how did you learn all this?” “Where? Sitting on this bench, chained to this oar. How? Through the goodness of God in bringing back to me what I heard, but little heeded, in happier days.” “Heard, but little heeded,” Walter sighed again. “Just my own case. But—one thing perplexes me.” “What is that?” “From whose lips _you_ can have learned all this.” For Walter believed, and not unnaturally, that there was only light in the land of Goshen, the countries of the Reformation, and that all the rest of the world lay in Egyptian darkness. Of the gleams that here and there illumined that darkness he had never heard. The matador smiled, a little sadly. “Perhaps,” he said, “I would scarce tell you _that_ did I not think my own hour near—my hour of deliverance. We feel the water calm and calmer under the keel as we draw nigh the shore. What could not be spoken once, for tears, is easily enough said now. She taught me, whom I loved best on earth.” His quiet tones sounded more sorrowfully in Walter’s ears than a burst of emotion would have done. It may be sadder to walk dryshod over the deep channel of a great grief passed away and done with, than to cross the shallow, noisy stream of a present sorrow. “It is bitter,” he said falteringly, “to be parted for ever from what we love. I too—I—” “Shall meet the loved again—up yonder,” said the matador, pointing with his fettered hand to the cloudless azure above them. “It was all my own folly, my own sin! Ah, you know not how deeply I have sinned!” “But God knows. Arise, and go to your Father, and say unto Him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.’” Walter’s tears flowed too fast to allow him to utter the answer that trembled on his lips. But eyes and thoughts were raised upwards, and the cry that reached no mortal ear was heard by Him who bindeth up the broken in heart, and giveth medicine to heal their sickness. Some days afterwards the matador seized a quiet moment in which to whisper to his friend, “I have been asking God to comfort you.—Has He?” Walter answered with brightening eyes, “Not yet with the best robe, and the ring, and the fatted calf. But even now with the word, ‘_This, My son_.’ And that is enough.” XXV. The Friend of the Poor. “We two walk on in our grassy places, On either marge of the moonlit flood, With the moon’s own sadness in our faces, Where joy is withered, blossom and bud.” JEAN INGELOW.