boy, and the
mangled face of the husband whose kiss was the only heaven I shall ever
know. I meant to die with them, but I failed; so they sent me here.
That was years ago; but I was a stone until that day in the chapel,
when you sang my Max's song, 'By-and-By'."

There was a brief silence, and Beryl's voice wavered as she said very
gently:

"Your trials were fiery; and though the crime was frightfully black,
God judges us according to the natures we are born with, and the
temptations that betray us; and He forgives all, if we are true
penitents and throw ourselves trustingly on His mercy. Now take this
powder; it will make you sleep."

"Will you stay with me? I shall not trouble anybody much longer. Say a
prayer for my sinful soul, that is going down into the eternal night."

"Let us pray together, that your pardoned soul may find blessed and
eternal peace."

Coming softly to the door, the doctor looked in through the iron
lattice, saw the figure of the nurse kneeling on the sanded floor, with
her bronzed head close to the pillow where the moaning victim's lay;
and involuntarily he took off his cloth cap, and bowed his gray head to
listen to the brief but solemn petition that went up from the dungeon
to the supreme and unerring Judge.

When he returned to the same spot an hour later, Beryl sat on the side
of the cot, with one hand clasping the brown wrist thrown across her
lap, the other pressed gently over the sufferer's hot, aching eyes; and
wonderfully sweet was the rich voice that chanted low:

"Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me.
And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God! I come, I come!
Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God! I come, I come!"

The noon sun was shining over a wet world, kindling into diamonds the
crystal fringe of rain drops hanging from the green lances of willows,
where a tufted red bird arched his scarlet throat in madrigal--when
four men lifted a cot, and bore it with its apparently dying burden to
a spot upon which the warm light fell in a golden flood.

Between the Destroying Angel and his gasping prey, stepped two,
anointed with the chrism of the Priesthood of Cure; and undismayed by
the strident, sibilant, fitful breath that distorted the blue lips of
the victim, they parried the sweep of the scythe of deat