alled in the skeleton language of mental philosophy, wherewith
the Father-God holds fast the souls of his children--to the very
last that we see of them, at least, and doubtless to endless ages
beyond--will sneer at Falconer's notion of making God's violin
a ministering spirit in the process of conversion. There is a
well-authenticated story of a convict's having been greatly reformed
for a time, by going, in one of the colonies, into a church, where the
matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as that in the church to
which he had gone when a boy--with his mother, I suppose. It was not the
matting that so far converted him: it was not to the music of his violin
that Falconer looked for aid, but to the memories of childhood, the
mysteries of the kingdom of innocence which that could recall--those
memories which

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing.

For an hour he did not venture to go near him. When he entered the room
he found him sitting in the same place, no longer weeping, but gazing
into the fire with a sad countenance, the expression of which showed
Falconer at once that the soul had come out of its cave of obscuration,
and drawn nearer to the surface of life. He had not seen him look so
much like one 'clothed, and in his right mind,' before. He knew well
that nothing could be built upon this; that this very emotion did but
expose him the more to the besetting sin; that in this mood he would
drink, even if he knew that he would in consequence be in danger of
murdering the wife whose letter had made him weep. But it was progress,
notwithstanding. He looked up at Robert as he entered, and then dropped
his eyes again. He regarded him perhaps as a presence doubtful whether
of angel or devil, even as the demoniacs regarded the Lord of Life who
had come to set them free. Bewildered he must have been to find himself,
towards the close of a long life of debauchery, wickedness, and the
growing pains of hell, caught in a net of old times, old feelings, old
truths.

Now Robert had carefully avoided every indication that might disclose
him to be a Scotchman even, nor was there the least sign of suspicion
in Andrew's manner. The only solution of the mystery that could have
presented itself to him was, that his friends were at the root of
it--probably his son, of whom he knew absolutely nothing. His mother
could not be alive still. Of his wife's relatives ther