"Well, Bell, my dear," said the carpenter, as his wife returned from afternoon service, "tell me what you've heard to-day, and I'll tell you what I've heard."

"Mr. Leyton preached as usual," replied Mrs. Stone, as she unloosed the red strings of her bonnet. "I think he's getting less shy, and more earnest. His text was, 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.'"

"Why, that would ha' done for the text of the sermon I've had all to myself," said Ben Stone.

"Sermon,—what do you mean?" asked his wife, pausing in the act of taking off her shawl.

"There's Ned Franks been here, and—talk of earnestness—he's earnest with a vengeance! There was nothing would content him but that I should own myself to be a downright, miserable sinner; and he threw out something more than a hint, that I'm like to come to the same end as those who wouldn't go into the ark, and so were drowned in the flood."

"I wish that Ned Franks would mind his own business," exclaimed Mrs. Stone, indignantly. "I'm sure that he, and every one knows that there's not a better man in the parish than you are; it would be well if, with all his fine talking, Mr. Franks were but half so good!"

"Softly, softly, my dear," said Ben Stone, amused and pleased at her warm defence. "Ned Franks is a capital fellow; a brave, noble-hearted man."

"Let him be what he likes," exclaimed Mrs. Stone, angrily pulling off her boots. "If he comes here a worritting and lecturing you, I shall shut the door upon him!"

"His visit was certainly very unlike that which the young curate paid me. Mr. Leyton, with his gentle way and soft voice, spoke of my trials and my hope; and said that a true Christian is not afraid even of death. Then says I, 'Sir, I'm never afraid of death;' so, of course, he takes it for granted that I'm a true Christian, and all right, and goes away quite pleased and happy. But as for Ned Franks,"—Ben Stone gave his little chuckling laugh, though it sounded less merry than usual,—"he'll take nothing for granted, except that I must be a sinner. He leans forward and looks right into your eyes, as if he meant to read you through and through, and let you see right into his soul also. I can just fancy," continued the sick carpenter, laughing again, "what sort of a sailor he was when he served the queen,—how he'd stick by his colors, and go slap-bang at an enemy!"

"But you're no enemy," cried Mrs. Stone, "neither his nor any one else's, and I'll not let him go slap-bang at you! Let him preach away as much as he likes to that wretched Nancy Sands whom he pulled out of the mill-stream!"

"There's not much chance of her deceiving herself, and saying that she has no sin," observed Stone.

"It was small kindness to her husband to save her," continued the carpenter's wife; "Sands has little cause to thank Ned. The poor clerk is growing thinner every day, and looked at church this afternoon as if he was going to be hanged. He knows that when Nancy comes out of hospital she'll be at her old tricks again, drinking him out of house and home; far better for him if all had been over at once! I couldn't help giving her a bit o' my mind about that, when I went to see her yesterday!"

"You did!" exclaimed Stone, in amused surprise; "how did she take it? If Nancy returned you a bit o' her mind," he continued, with a laugh, "I guess you'd the worst of the exchange. You never were a match for Nancy, my dear."

"She said nothing, but looked as if she could have eaten me," replied Mrs. Stone.

"Her accident must have pulled her down a bit, if she'd not something sharper than a look to fling at you," observed Ben. "You and she used to go at it like poker and tongs, but Nancy could hit hardest and longest; she'd a tongue like a mill-wheel if once you set it a-going. But put the kettle on the fire, my dear, and lets have a drop of good tea. In the evening I'll do what I've been intending to do for these many years past,—look over that box of old things belonging to my poor mother, whom I lost when I was a little chap but nine years of age. I want to sort 'em,—put by what I mean to keep, and burn what's of use to no one. Ned Franks himself would say it was right for a sick man to put his house in order."

The task of looking over the contents of that old box, which had been stowed away in a cupboard for a great length of time, was one which the carpenter had put off from day to day, and year to year, perhaps because—till illness came—he had led a busy, active life, or more probably because his cheerful, easy nature disliked any occupation that might awaken melancholy thoughts. And who but is saddened by turning over memorials of one loved and lost, even though, as in the case of Stone, forty or fifty years may have elapsed since the friend departed. This Sunday evening, as twilight came on, Ben Stone fulfilled the long-deferred task. His wife brought the old box,—a deal one covered with faded paper,—and placed it on a chair close to his bed, that he might examine its contents with ease. She lighted a candle and put it on the table beside her husband, and then sat down with some little curiosity to see her mother-in-law's hoarded treasures, but a secret conviction that the box would hold nothing but "old-fashioned rubbish."

The late Mrs. Stone had not been an orderly woman, or perhaps death had taken her by surprise, so that she had left her things in confusion,—such was the silent reflection of her son's wife, as Ben went slowly over the contents of the box. They were a strange medley. There were two gilt lockets, a nutmeg-grater, an old tooth-brush and silver thimble, a collar, an unfinished bit of embroidery, a sampler, several skeins of silk and cotton of various colors in a tangled mass together, fragments of gimp and tape, a red leather pocket-book much the worse for wear, a prayer-book without a cover, and a padlock without a key. There were also heaps of papers, recipes for cures, and recipes for dishes, old patterns, old letters, old bills, a jumble of all sorts of things which it was scarcely matter of wonder that no one had cared to reduce into order.

"You may use all these receipted bills to light the fire with, my dear," said Ben Stone; "they at least can be useful to nobody. But I'll keep this old bit of an Almanac,—1815! Well, well; how time passes! It seems strange to look back to the days when this Almanac was a new one!"

"I think that this may go into the fire too," said Mrs. Stone, who had been vainly trying to unravel a silken tangle.

"Ah! here's something curious," observed Ben, as he drew out an old letter, written on very coarse paper, in a very round, childish hand, a letter which had been fastened with a big red wafer pressed down with a button, and which was soiled with many a blot.

"Here is, I suppose, the very first letter as ever I wrote. I didn't remember that I had ever written to my mother. She died—poor, dear soul!—the week after I first went to school."

Mrs. Stone was of course interested, as any good wife would have been, in the first specimen of her husband's handwriting. She pushed the candle nearer to him, and read over his shoulder, as she might have done at the distance of half the length of the room, the school-boy's big, blotted scrawl.

"Dear Mother, I hope your well. I am ill my head is so bad pleas get me home quick QUICK your dutiful son B. S."

Mrs. Stone smiled, but her husband looked grave. Strange old recollections, and those by no means of a pleasing nature, were brought back to his mind by the sight of that—till now—forgotten letter to his mother. Ben put up his hand to his forehead, and pushed up the nightcap from his temples.

"Yes, yes," he muttered to himself, "I remember writing that letter as if it were but yesterday; I remember the very button which I used to press down the wafer. I was very wretched on first going to school,—the boys bullied me, and I could not bear regular work; so to get my poor mother to take me home, I wrote that letter with a big falsehood in it. It was the first,—the only note as ever I sent her, and it was full of lies! Strange that that should turn up now!"

"There's nothing to take to heart in such an old matter as that," observed Mrs. Stone, struck by the unusual gravity of her husband, who generally turned everything into a jest. "Nobody thinks of raking up what they've done wrong forty or fifty years back."

"Tut, I should not care a toss of a straw about it," replied Stone, "had I told the falsehood to any one but my mother, and that just a few days before I lost her. I'd never an opportunity of telling her that I'd deceived her, or of asking her to forgive me, for I did not go home till she lay in her coffin. To think of that vile bit of paper turning up against me now!" Ben doubled the note, and, tearing it into pieces, threw the fragments on the floor.

It may be a matter of surprise that a sin of childhood should have in the slightest degree ruffled the easy conscience of such a man as Ben Stone. He had thought very little indeed of sinning against God, but his natural affections made him feel pain at having sinned against a sick mother. Perhaps the words of Franks had not been so utterly unheeded as they had seemed at first to be, and had served to rouse a suspicion, confirmed by the school-boy's letter, that there might be many a forgotten fault of the highly respectable man that would "turn up against him" some day; faults for which forgiveness had never been granted or asked. Be that as it may, Stone suddenly found out that he was tired and sleepy, and bade his wife shut up the box and take it away. The evening was getting on; it was time for him to take his night-draught, and go quietly to rest.

Though the night-draught was taken and the pillows carefully beaten up and sleep soon closed the invalid's eyes, it was not quiet rest. A confused medley of thoughts shaped themselves into dreams, which took their color from what had occurred during the day. Ben Stone in his sleep was still looking over and examining things of the past; his whole room appeared to be filled up with boxes, one piled on another, and there seemed to be a necessity for him to open and put them all into order. This was in itself an oppressive feeling to the dreamer; but the oppression became much greater when he found that each box was filled to overflowing with bills,—old, forgotten bills,—and that not one of them was receipted; not one had ever been paid. Stone had a dim idea that all these debts were connected with unforgiven sin, from that falsehood contained in his first letter to the last "idle word" which had fallen from his lips. As box after box was emptied, and every unpaid bill thrown down in despair, the white paper seemed to turn into foam, a sea was rising around him, and it appeared to Stone as if his numberless debts would drown him at last. Ned Franks was by the side of the dreamer, helping him to look over his boxes, and saying, every now and then, in an earnest, anxious tone, "Ben Stone, if you don't pay, you are a ruined man!—if you don't pay, you are ruined forever!" So strong was the impression left on the dreamer's mind, that he awoke with the words on his lips, "If you don't pay, you are ruined forever!"

Very still was the room when Stone opened his eyes with a start, relieved to find that he had, after all, been but dreaming. One feeble night-light was making "darkness visible" in the chamber, where no other object could distinctly be seen. Even so faint a light had Stone's conscience hitherto thrown upon spiritual things, as different from the clear radiance of Truth as the night-light from the sun. The sinner had not known his sinfulness because his light had been too dim to enable him to see it.

As Ben Stone lay silent and still on his pillow, the breeze bore to him, more distinctly than he ever before had heard it in his cottage, the sound of the church clock striking ONE. For once Stone felt something solemn in the sound; he felt that time was being meted out to him, that his remaining hours might be few, and that he was not prepared for eternity.

Then Stone thought of Ned Franks. The sailor was not afraid of death, but his reason for not fearing it was something utterly different from the easy reliance on his own goodness which the carpenter knew to have been his own. Ned Franks had shrunk from the idea of his safety depending on his merits. On what then did it depend? The invalid, with a dawning perception that he himself might not be quite as secure as he had lately thought himself to be, felt desirous to know more clearly what was Franks's hope of salvation; and when, in the morning, Mrs. Stone was preparing her husband's breakfast, he asked her to stop the sailor when next he should pass their door, and ask him to step in and see him.