On the following morning Franks started before breakfast for a spot called Cliff Farm, to make arrangements with the owner of the place for the loan of his cart to carry the school-master's family, and what little luggage they possessed, to the station on the succeeding Thursday. The errand was not a pleasant one, but Franks had no longer the heavy weight on his heart which had oppressed him so long as he felt that, not being in charity with man, he could not be at peace with his God. Franks could now look calmly up at the clear blue sky, flecked with rosy morning clouds, with a spirit in harmony with the tranquil, holy beauty of nature.

Cliff Farm owed its name to its position. It stood on very high ground, and was approached by a road steep enough to try the breath and mettle of any horse drawing a conveyance. On one side, not a hundred yards to the right of the farm-house, there was an abrupt fall of the ground, forming a sheer perpendicular descent of some fifty or sixty feet, down which tumbled a light sparkling cascade. It was the joyous leap of the young stream which, not a mile lower down, turned the wheel of the mill, after winding its way past the village of Colme. The brook, rushing with a pleasant gurgling sound over its rocky bed, added to the charm of the spot, which was one of the loveliest in the county. Franks had often bent his steps towards Cliff Farm, and stood on the edge of that steep, rocky bank, to enjoy the extensive view which it commanded.

And there the school-master now lingered to gaze, perhaps for the last time, from that point on the beautiful landscape before him. There lay beneath him the village of Colme, the ivy-mantled church in which he had been married to Persis, and to which they had brought their first-born babe to offer him unto the Lord. There was the dear little school-house, at once the scene of Franks's earliest labors, and the home in which he had known more of pure happiness than falls to the lot of most men, even during the longest life. The eye of the school-master wandered along the high road leading towards the town; his gaze lingered on the cottage of Nancy Sands; never would he remember that dwelling and its inmates but with feelings of thankful joy. Then the glance of Franks fell on the chimneys of Stone's house; trees intervening hid the rest of the building from his view; there the one-armed sailor had sought faithfully, and not unsuccessfully, to open blinded eyes to the truth. Farther on—how well Franks knew its position!—lay the wooded dell in which Persis had dwelt when he wooed her, and where he had first met with Isaacs, then an unconverted Jew,—now, partly through his words, his prayers, his example, a consistent Christian believer. The little stream plunging over the cliff, which was almost at the feet of Ned Franks, was the same from which—by the mill in that same wooded dell—he had drawn the drowning Nancy at the imminent peril of his life. The pines on yon eastern hill looked down, as the school-master well knew, on the almshouses nestling in Wild Rose Hollow. How greatly would he be missed there! If that thought was sad, it also was sweet. There would be many a tear shed by aged eyes in those cottages which he had labored so hard to repair. Ned sighed to think that his work there must be left unfinished.

Still farther on roved the eye of Franks. On another hill, girdled with woods, stood the Hall; he could see its upper windows glancing in the light of the morning sun.

"O God! Thy blessing may yet rest on that dark place—as it seems to us," said the school-master half aloud. "Thou sendest thy sunshine to all, so may none be shut out from thy grace. It seems to me at this moment as if I could forgive from my soul even Sir Lacy Barton."

As Ned pursued his meditations, suddenly he was startled by a cry of "Stop him! stop him!" from behind, with the sound of the clattering hoofs of a horse rushing on in wild, frantic career down the steep slope just above the spot on which Franks was standing. Turning quickly round, he beheld a black hunter dashing towards him at a furious speed, which its rider, tugging at the rein, tried in vein to check, as his horse was carrying him direct towards the cliff and—unless it were possible to stop his career—to inevitable destruction! Franks had but an instant to calculate chances, to recognize the rider, to resolve to try to save him by catching at the rein as the maddened hunter rushed like a whirlwind by! Franks made the attempt, but failed, and was struck to the earth with violence! The hand of no single man would have sufficed to stop the furious and powerful animal which the baronet rode. Ned instantly sprang to his feet, and, as he did so, saw the fearful plunge over the cliff, and heard the wild cry for help from one beyond all human help. Then followed a terrible crash below!

"He's lost!" exclaimed the owner of Cliff Farm, who came panting up to the spot, followed by one of his men, who had also witnessed the frightful catastrophe, and Ned's gallant though fruitless effort to avert it.

"Let's make our way down without a moment's delay!" cried Ned; "he may be living still!"

The three men, Franks the foremost of the party, with all speed clambered to the bottom of the cliff, at a place where a little roughness in the ground, and a few bushes to hold by, enabled them to manage the descent. I will not dwell on the fearful sight which awaited them. The black horse lay dead, the rider apparently dying. Franks took the lead in doing all that could be done for the sufferer. One messenger was sent off to the Hall, another to the town for a surgeon. There was no difficulty in finding messengers, for country people, who had seen the horse when it first started off, now came running to the scene of the disaster.

With all the tenderness that he could have shown to his dearest friend, Ned helped to place the crushed and senseless Sir Lacy upon a shutter, and to carry him by a steep path which wound up the cliff at a little distance from the cascade, to the shelter of Cliff Farm. Franks did not quit him till his own people, summoned hastily from the Hall, were around him, and amongst them the school-master-elect. Then, as he could be of no farther use, Ned Franks, thoughtful and grave, returned to his home. He found his pupils already assembled. Of course the tidings of the accident to Sir Lacy Barton were on every one's lips, and the boys awaited from their master an account of all that had happened, perhaps with such comments as what they deemed a judgment upon a wicked man might call forth from their teacher.

But Franks was not one to condemn a poor sinner already under the chastening of Heaven, nor to gratify private malice under the pretence of enforcing a lesson. He was much more grave and serious than usual, but avoided making any allusion to the fate of his persecutor, though the awful scene which he had witnessed was the uppermost thought in his mind. It was a relief to Franks, when, study-time being over, his pupils dispersed, and he was able to go to his own quiet room, where Persis was anxiously awaiting him. She, of course, like every one else in Colme, knew what had occurred, and knew, also, that the baronet had by this time been conveyed to the Hall, where he lay in a very critical state.

"Persis, how thankful I am that God had enabled me to forgive that man," said Ned Franks to his wife as they met. "Poor fellow! poor fellow! had he wronged me far more than he has done, I could feel nothing but pity for him now. Let us pray that God may spare him yet for a new and a better life."

The day wore on, and Franks and Persis did not fail at the appointed time to go to the cottage of Stone; a neighbor taking care of their baby during the short time of their absence. Glorious was that evening in August! The fields were dotted with golden sheaves, where the summer harvest of joy was following the early sowing in tears. Mr. Curtis, the venerable vicar, himself raised from what had been likely to prove a death-bed, came to administer the Holy Supper to a dying, penitent man. While the pastor had been a prisoner to his own room, as had for many months been the case, he had been constantly visiting in thought the dwellings of his flock; if he could not preach to them, he could pray for them. There were two of his parishioners whose cases had then lain particularly heavy on the mind of the good old man, Nancy Sands and Ben Stone. At the beginning of the year they had been the two in all the village who might have been pointed out, from their appearance, as giving promise of long life; the brawny carpenter, jovial and hearty, and the clerk's wife with her strongly built form, muscular arms, and loud voice. They were also the two about whose spiritual state their pastor had felt most concern. Nancy, a slave to violent passions, furious temper, and a craving for drink. Stone, free from all these vices, yet, in his self-righteousness and blindness of heart, almost as far from the kingdom of heaven as the neighbor whom he despised. Almost at the same time the two had been stricken down, the one by a terrible accident, the other by sudden illness. Affliction had come to both the Pharisee and the publican. One had been raised and restored, though maimed, to her home; the other was never to quit his cottage till carried forth in his coffin. But mercy had visited each, and, as they met to attend the solemn service together, both penitents could say in the words of the Psalmist, It is good for me that I have been afflicted.

This was the first time that Nancy had been a communicant; she had never before dared to approach the table of the Lord. Stone, on the contrary, had attended regularly, at stated times in the year; but with him, until now, the service had been but an empty form, only tending to increase the blindness of his conscience, by leading him to think that he had fulfilled all righteousness, when he made thus open profession of faith, without one spark of its living reality. At that time Ben Stone would have scouted the idea of Nancy Sands, whom he deemed the worst woman in Colme, being permitted to enter his cottage on an occasion so solemn, to show that she shared his faith and his hopes, and might share his happiness in the mansions above. Yet there they were now together, Pharisee and publican, both brought to the foot of the cross; the once despised drunkard meekly giving God thanks that she was not what she once had been, and the Pharisee, not raising up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but silently uttering the prayer, God be merciful to me a sinner!

Often had Persis and her husband joined in the holy service, but never had they felt heaven nearer to them, and the Christian's hope sweeter, than they did in Stone's cottage on that bright August eve. They saw the saving power of the gospel in the two penitents before them, the one rescued from the rock of self-righteousness, the other from the whirlpool of intemperance. The little flock gathered together in that peaceful home seemed an emblem of that blessed band, who, through God's mercy and grace, shall, after life's troubles and tossings, reach in safety the heavenly shore.

As the Frankses returned, after the solemn meeting by the sick-bed of Stone, a rich, golden glow was over the sky, and a deep stillness in the air; heaven seemed to be all brightness, and earth all peace. Then came a sound, solemn at all times, but especially so at that hour, the measured tolling of the church-bells for a departed soul. It was the first announcement to those who had met in Stone's cottage that the unhappy Sir Lacy had been called to his last account.

Yes, the bells that had been silent on his arrival at his ancestral home, now, with slow and mournful peal, announced his departure. Soon would a dark and narrow home receive the mortal remains of the late possessor of thousands of acres. Had power, wealth, and high station been a blessing or a curse to him who had not indeed buried his talents, but made them an instrument of evil? The profane tongue was now silenced; the hand that had rattled the dice, the brain once so busy with evil designs, the heart that had been a den of wickedness, now lay lifeless and cold. The baronet's spirit had passed from earth, and left no sweet memories behind. Another and a far better man would now bear his title and rule in his Hall, and dispense happiness as widely as the late lord of the manor had tried to spread the contagion of evil. Every toll of the solemn bell, which pealed through the calm evening air, seemed, with a voice more impressive than that of man, to repeat the warning, He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.