The processes of law were at length complete, and Mr. Arnot found himself in a prison cell, with the prospect that years must elapse before he would receive a freedom that now was dreaded almost more than his forced seclusion. After his conviction he had been taken from Hillaton to a large prison of the State, in a distant city.

"I shall follow you, Thomas, as soon as I can complete such arrangements as are essential," Mrs. Arnot had said, "and will remain as near to you as I can. Indeed, it will be easier for Laura and me to commence our new life there than here."

The man had at last begun to realize the whole truth. True to his nature, he thought of himself first, and saw that his crime, like a great black hand, had dragged him down from his proud eminence of power and universal respect, away from his beloved business, and had shut him up in this narrow, stony sepulchre, for what better was his prison cell than a tomb to a man with his tireless mind? The same mind which like a giant had carried its huge burden every day, was still his; but now there was nothing for it to do. And yet it would act, for constant mental action had become a necessity from a lifetime of habit. Heretofore his vast business taxed every faculty to the utmost. He had to keep his eye on all the great markets of the world; he had to follow politicians, diplomats, and monarchs into their secret councils, and guess at their policy in order to shape his own business policy. His interests were so large and far-reaching that it had been necessary for him to take a glance over the world before he could properly direct his affairs from his private office. For years he had been commanding a small army of men, and with consummate skill and constant thought he had arrayed the industry of his army against the labors of like armies under the leadership of other men in competition with himself. His mind had learned to flash with increasing speed and accuracy to one and another of all these varied interests. But now the great fabric of business and wealth, which he had built by a lifetime of labor, had vanished like a dream, and nothing remained but the mind that had constructed it.

"Ah!" he groaned again and again, "why could not mind and memory perish also?"

But they remained, and were the only possessions left of his great wealth.

Then he began to think of his wife and Laura. He had beggared them, and, what was far worse, he had darkened their lives with the shadow of his own disgrace. Wholly innocent as they were, they must suffer untold wretchedness through his act. In his view he was the cause of the broken engagement between his niece and the wealthy Mr. Beaumont, and now he saw that there was nothing before the girl but a dreary effort to gain a livelihood by her own labor, and this effort rendered almost hopeless by the reflected shame of his crime.

His wife also was growing old and feeble. At last he realized he had a wife such as is given to but few men—a woman who was great enough to be tender and sympathetic through all the awful weeks that had elapsed since the discovery of his crime—a woman who could face what she saw before her and utter no words of repining or reproach.

He now saw how cold and hard and unappreciative he had been toward her in the days of his prosperity, and he cursed himself and his unutterable folly.

Thus his great powerful mind turned in vindictive rage against itself. Memory began to show him with mocking finger and bitter jibes where he might have acted more wisely in his business, more wisely in his social relations, and especially more wisely and humanely, to say the least, in his own home. It seemed to take a fiendish delight in telling him how everything might have been different, and how he, instead of brooding in a prison cell, might have been the most honored, useful, wealthy, and happy man in Hillaton.

Thus he was tortured until physical exhaustion brought him a brief respite of sleep. But the next day it was the same wretched round of bitter memories and vain but torturing activity of mind. Day after day passed and he grew haggard under his increasing mental distress. His mind was like a great driving wheel, upon which all the tremendous motive power is turned without cessation, but for which there is nothing to drive save the man himself, and seemingly it would drive him mad.

At last he said to himself, "I cannot endure this. For my own sake, for the sake of my wife and Laura, it were better that an utter blank should take the place of Thomas Arnot. I am, and ever shall be, only a burden to them. I am coming to be an intolerable burden to myself."

The thought of suicide, once entertained, grew rapidly in favor, and at last it became only a question how he could carry out his dark purpose. With this definite plan before him he grew calmer. At last he had something to do in the future, and terrible memory must suspend for a time its scorpion lash while he thought how best to carry out his plan.

The suicide about to take the risk of endless suffering is usually desirous that the intervening moments of his "taking off" should be as painless as possible, and Mr. Arnot began to think how he could make his exit momentary. But his more tranquil mood, the result of having some definite action before him, led to sleep, and the long night passed in unconsciousness, the weary body clogging the wheels of conscious thought.

The sun was shining when he awoke; but with returning consciousness came memory and pain, and the old cowardly desire to escape all the consequences of his sin by death. He vowed he would not live to see another day, and once more he commenced brooding over the one question, how he would die. As he took up this question where he had dropped it the previous night, the thought occurred to him what a long respite he had had from pain. Then like a flash of lightning came another thought:

"Suppose by my self-destroying act I pass into a condition of life in which there is no sleep, and memory can torture without cessation, without respite? True, I have tried to believe there is no future life, but am I sure of it? Here I can obtain a little rest. For hours I have been unconscious, through the weight of the body upon my spirit. How can I be sure that the spirit cannot exist separately and suffer just the same? I am not suffering now through my body, and have not been through all these terrible days. My body is here in this cell, inert and motionless, painless, while in my mind I am enduring the torments of the damned. The respite from suffering that I have had has come through the weariness of my body, and here I am planning to cast down the one barrier that perhaps saves me from an eternity of torturing thought and memory."

He was appalled at the bare possibility of such a future; reason told him that such a future was probable, and conscience told him that it was before him in veritable truth. He felt that wherever he carried memory and his present character he would be most miserable, whether it were in Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise, or the heaven or hell of the Bible.

There was no more thought of suicide. Indeed, he shrank from death with inexpressible dread.

Slowly his thoughts turned to his wife, the woman who had been so true to him, the one human being of all the world who now stood by him. She might help him in his desperate strait. She seemed to have a principle within her soul which sustained her, and which might sustain him. At any rate, he longed to see her once more, and ask her forgiveness in deep contrition for his base and lifelong failure to "love, honor, and cherish her," as he had promised at God's altar and before many witnesses.

The devoted wife came and patiently entered on her ministry of love and Christian faith, and out of the chaos of the fallen man of iron and stone there gradually emerged a new man, who first became in Christ's expressive words "a little child" in spiritual things, that he might grow naturally and in the symmetry of the enduring manhood which God designs to perfect in the coming ages.

Mrs. Arnot's sturdy integrity led her to give up everything to her husband's creditors, and she came to the city of her new abode wherein the prison was located almost penniless. But she brought letters from Dr. Barstow, Mr. Ivison, and other Christian people of Hillaton. These were presented at a church of the denomination to which she belonged, and all she asked was some employment by which she and Laura could support themselves. These letters secured confidence at once. There was no mystery—nothing concealed—and, although so shadowed by the disgrace of another, the bearing of the ladies inspired respect and won sympathy. A gentleman connected with the church gave Laura the position of saleswoman in his bookstore, and to Mrs. Arnot's little suburban cottage of only three rooms kind and interested ladies brought sewing and fancy-work. Thus they were provided for, as God's people ever are in some way.

Mrs. Arnot had written a long letter to Haldane before leaving Hillaton, giving a full account of their troubles, with one exception. At Laura's request she had not mentioned the broken engagement with Beaumont.

"If possible, I wish to see him myself before he knows," she had said. "At least, before any correspondence takes place between us, I wish to look into his eyes, and if I see the faintest trace of shrinking from me there, as I saw it in Mr. Beaumont's eyes, I will never marry him, truly as I love him."

Mrs. Arnot's face had lighted up with its old-time expression, as she said:

"Laura, don't you know Egbert Haldane better than that?"

"I can't help it," she had replied with a troubled brow; "the manner of nearly every one has changed so greatly that I must see him first."

Haldane did not receive Mrs. Arnot's first letter. He was at sea with his regiment, on his way to the far Southwest, when the events in which he would have been so deeply interested began to occur. After reaching his new scene of duty, there were constant alternations of march and battle. In the terrible campaign that followed, the men of the army he was acting with were decimated, and officers dropped out fast. In consequence, Haldane, who received but two slight wounds, that did not disable him, was promoted rapidly. The colonel of the regiment was killed soon after their arrival, and from the command of the regiment he rose, before the campaign was over, to command a brigade, and then a division; and he performed his duties so faithfully and ably that he was confirmed in this position.

Mrs. Arnot's first letter had followed him around for a time, and then was lost, like so many others in that time of dire confusion. Her second letter after long delay reached him, but it was very brief and hurried, and referred to troubles that he did not understand. From members of his old regiment, however, rumors reached him of some disaster to Mr. Arnot, and wrong-doing on his part, which had led to imprisonment.

Haldane was greatly shocked at the bare possibility of such events, and wrote a most sympathetic letter to Mrs. Arnot, which never reached her. She had received some of his previous letters, but not this one.

By the time the campaign was over one of Haldane's wounds began to trouble him very much, and his health seemed generally broken down from exposure and overexertion. As a leave of absence was offered him, he availed himself of it and took passage to New York.

Three or four letters from his mother had reached him, but that lady's causeless jealousy of Mrs. Arnot had grown to such proportions that she never mentioned her old friend's name.

The long days of the homeward voyage were passed by Haldane in vain conjecture. Of one thing he felt sure, and that was that Laura was by this time, or soon would be, Mrs. Beaumont; and now that the excitement of military service was over, the thought rested on him with a weight that was almost crushing.

One evening Mr. Growther was dozing as usual between his cat and dog, when some one lifted the latch and walked in without the ceremony of knocking.

"Look here, stranger, where's yer manners?" snarled the old gentleman. Then catching a glimpse of the well-remembered face, though now obscured by a tremendous beard, he started up, exclaiming,

"Lord a' massy! 'taint you, is it? And you compared yourself with that little, peaked-faced chap that's around just the same—you with shoulders as broad as them are, and two stars on 'em too!"

The old man nearly went beside himself with joy. He gave the cat and dog each a vigorous kick, and told them to "wake up and see if they could believe their eyes."

It was some time before Haldane could get him quieted down so as to answer all the questions that he was longing to put; but at last he drew out the story in full of Mr. Arnot's forgery and its consequences.

"Has Mr. Beaumont married Miss Romeyn?" at last he faltered.

"No; I reckon not," said Mr. Growther dryly.

"What do you mean?" asked Haldane sharply.

"Well, all I know is that he didn't marry her, and she ain't the kind of a girl to marry him, whether he would or no, and so they ain't married."

"The infernal scoundrel!" thundered Haldane, springing to his feet.
"The—"

"Hold on!" cried Mr. Growther. "O Lord a' massy! I half believe he's got to swearin' down in the war. If he's backslid agin, nothin' but my little, peaked-faced chap will ever bring him around a nuther time."

Haldane was stalking up and down the room in strong excitement and quite oblivious of Mr. Growther's perplexity.

"The unutterable fool!" he exclaimed, "to part from such a woman as
Laura Romeyn for any cause save death."

"Well, hang it all! if he's a fool that's his business. What on 'arth is the matter with you? I ain't used to havin' bombshells go off right under my nose as you be, and the way you are explodin' round kinder takes away my breath."

"Forgive me, my old friend; but I never had a shot strike quite as close as this. Poor girl! Poor girl! What a prospect she had a few months since. True enough, Beaumont was never a man to my taste; but a woman sees no faults in the man she loves; and he could have given her everything that her cultivated taste could wish for. Poor girl, she must be broken-hearted with all this trouble and disappointment."

"If I was you, I'd go and see if she was," said Mr. Growther, with a shrewd twinkle in his eyes. "I've heerd tell of hearts bein' mended in my day."

Haldane looked at him a moment, and, as he caught his old friend's meaning, he brought his hand down on the table with a force that made everything in the old kitchen ring again.

"O Lord a' massy!" ejaculated Mr. Growther, hopping half out of his chair.

"Mr. Growther," said Haldane, starting up, "I came to have a very profound respect for your sagacity and wisdom years ago, but to-night you have surpassed Solomon himself. I shall take your most excellent advice at once and go and see."

"Not to-night—"

"Yes, I can yet catch the owl train to-night. Good-by for a short time."

"No wonder he took the rebs' works, if he went for 'em like that," chuckled Mr. Growther, as he composed himself after the excitement of the unexpected visit. "Now I know what made him look so long as if something was a-gnawin' at his heart; so I'm a-thinkin' there'll be two hearts mended."

Haldane reached the city in which Mrs. Arnot resided early in the morning, and as he had no clew to her residence, he felt that his best chance of hearing of her would be at the prison itself, for he knew well that she would seek either to see or learn of her husband's welfare almost daily. In answer to his inquiries, he was told that she would be sure to come to the prison at such an hour in the evening since that was her custom.

He must get through the day the best he could, and so strolled off to the business part of the city, where was located the leading hotel, and was followed by curious eyes and surmises. Major-generals were not in the habit of inquiring at the prison after convicts' wives.

As he passed a bookstore, it occurred to him that an exciting story would help kill time, and he sauntered in and commenced looking over the latest publications that were seductively arranged near the door.

"I'll go to breakfast now, Miss," said the junior clerk who swept the store.

"Thank you. Oh, go quickly," murmured Laura Romeyn to herself, as with breathless interest she watched the unconscious officer, waiting till he should look up and recognize her standing behind a counter. She was destined to have her wish in very truth, for when he saw her he would be so surely off his guard from surprise that she could see into the very depths of his heart.

Would he never look up? She put her hand to her side, for anticipation was so intense as to become a pain. She almost panted from excitement. This was the supreme moment of her life, but the very fact of his coming to this city promised well for the hope which fed her life.

"Ah, he is reading. The thought of some stranger holds him, while my intense thoughts and feelings no more affect him than if I were a thousand miles away. How strong and manly he looks! How well that uniform becomes him, though evidently worn and battle-stained! Ah! two stars upon his shoulder! Can it be that he has won such high rank? What will he think of poor me, selling books for bread? Egbert Haldane, beware! If you shrink from me now, even in the expression of your eye, I stand aloof from you forever."

The man thus standing on the brink of fate, read leisurely on, smiling at some quaint fancy of the author, who had gained his attention for a moment.

"Heigh ho!" he said at last, "this stealing diversion from a book unbought is scarcely honest, so I will—"

The book dropped from his hands, and he passed his hands across his eyes as if to brush away a film. Then his face lighted up with all the noble and sympathetic feeling that Laura had ever wished or hoped to see, and he sprang impetuously toward her.

"Miss Romeyn," he exclaimed. "Oh, this is better than I hoped."

"Did you hope to find me earning my bread in this humble way?" she faltered, deliciously conscious that he was almost crushing her hand in a grasp that was all too friendly.

"I was hoping to find you—and Mrs. Arnot," he added with a sudden deepening of color. "I thought a long day must elapse before I could learn of your residence."

"Do you know all?" she asked, very gravely.

"Yes, Miss Romeyn," he replied with moistening eyes, "I know all. Perhaps my past experience enables me to sympathize with you more than others can. But be that as it may, I do give you the whole sympathy of my heart; and for this brave effort to win your own bread I respect and honor you more, if possible, than I did when you were in your beautiful home at Hillaton."

Laura's tears were now falling fast, but she was smiling nevertheless, and she said, hesitatingly:

"I do not consider myself such a deplorable object of sympathy; I have good health, a kind employer, enough to live upon, and a tolerably clear conscience. Of course I do feel deeply for auntie and uncle, and yet I think auntie is happier than she has been for many years. If all had remained as it was at Hillaton, the ice around uncle's heart would have grown harder and thicker to the end; now it is melting away, and auntie's thoughts reach so far beyond time and earth, that she is forgetting the painful present in thoughts of the future."

"I have often asked myself," exclaimed Haldane, "could God have made a nobler woman? Ah! Miss Laura, you do not know how much I owe to her."

"You have taught us that God can make noble men also."

"I have merely done my duty," he said, with a careless gesture. "When can I see Mrs. Arnot?"

"I can't go home till noon, but I think I can direct you to the house."

"Can I not stay and help you sell books? Then I can go home with you."

"A major-general behind the counter selling books would make a sensation in town, truly."

"If the people were of my way of thinking, Miss Laura Romeyn selling books would make a far greater sensation."

"Very few are of your way of thinking, Mr. Haldane."

"I am heartily glad of it," he ejaculated.

"Indeed!"

"Pardon me, Miss Romeyn" he said with a deep flush, "you do not understand what I mean." Then he burst out impetuously, "Miss Laura, I cannot school myself into patience. I have been in despair so many years that since I now dare to imagine that there is a bare chance for me, I cannot wait decorously for some fitting occasion. But if you can give me even the faintest hope I will be patience and devotion itself."

"Hope of what?" said Laura faintly, turning away her face.

"Oh, Miss Laura, I ask too much," he answered sadly.

"You have not asked anything very definitely, Mr. Haldane," she faltered.

"I ask for the privilege of trying to win you as my wife."

"Ah, Egbert," she cried, joyously, "you have stood the test; for if you had shrunk, even in your thoughts, from poor, penniless Laura Romeyn, with her uncle in yonder prison, you might have tried in vain to win me."

"God knows I did not shrink," he said eagerly, and reaching out his hand across the counter.

"I know it too," she said shyly.

"Laura, all that I am, or ever can be, goes with that hand."

She put her hand in his, and looking into his face with an expression which he had never seen before, she said:

"Egbert, I have loved you ever since you went, as a true knight, to the aid of cousin Amy."

And thus they plighted their faith to each other across the counter, and then he came around on her side.

We shall not attempt to portray the meeting between Mrs. Arnot and one whom she had learned to look upon as a son, and who loved her with an affection that had its basis in the deepest gratitude.

Our story is substantially ended. It only remains to be said that Haldane, by every means in his power, showed gentle and forbearing consideration for his mother's feelings, and thus she was eventually led to be reconciled to his choice, if not to approve of it.

"After all, it is just like Egbert," she said to her daughters, "and we will have to make the best of it."

Haldane's leave of absence passed all too quickly, and in parting he said to Laura:

"You think I have faced some rather difficult duties before, but there was never one that could compare with leaving you for the uncertainties of a soldier's life."

But he went nevertheless, and remained till the end of the war.

Not long after going to the front he was taken prisoner in a disastrous battle, but he found means of informing his old friend Dr. Orton of the fact. Although the doctor was a rebel to the backbone, he swore he would "break up the Confederacy" if Haldane was not released, and through his influence the young man was soon brought to his friend's hospitable home, where he found Amy installed as housekeeper. She was now Mrs. Orton, for her lover returned as soon as it was safe for him to do so after the end of the epidemic. He was now away in the army, and thus Haldane did not meet him at that time; but later in the conflict Colonel Orton in turn became a prisoner of war, and Haldane was able to return the kindness which he received on this occasion. Mrs. Poland resided with Amy, and they both were most happy to learn that they would eventually have a relative as well as friend in their captive, for never was a prisoner of war made more of than Haldane up to the time of his exchange.

Years have passed. The agony of the war has long been over. Not only peace but prosperity is once more prevailing throughout the land.

Mr. and Mrs. Arnot reside in their old home, but Mrs. Egbert Haldane is its mistress. Much effort was made to induce Mr. Growther to take up his abode there also, but he would not leave the quaint old kitchen, where he said "the little peaked-faced chap was sittin' beside him all the time."

At last he failed and was about to die. Looking up into Mrs. Arnot's face, he said:

"I don't think a bit better of myself. I'm twisted all out o' shape. But the little chap has taught me how the Good Father will receive me."

The wealthiest people of Hillaton are glad to obtain the services of Dr. Haldane, and to pay for them; they are glad to welcome him to their homes when his busy life permits him to come; but the proudest citizen must wait when Christ, in the person of the poorest and lowliest, sends word to this knightly man, "I am sick or in prison"; "I am naked or hungry."

THE END

*****

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