w; and though
resentment had been mingled with the grief and mortification she felt
at finding how much he still submitted to Rose's superior charms, in a
breast as really generous and humane as that of Jack Tier's, such a
feeling was not likely to endure in the midst of a scene like that she
was now called to witness. The muscles of her countenance twitched,
the hard-looking, tanned face began to lose its sternness, and every
way she appeared like one profoundly disturbed.

"Turn to Him whose goodness and marcy may sarve you, Stephen," she
said, in a milder and more feminine tone than she had used now for
years, making her more like herself than either her husband or Rose
had seen her since the commencement of the late voyage; "my sayin'
that I forget and forgive cannot help a man on his death-bed."

"It will settle my mind, Molly, and leave me freer to turn my thoughts
to God."

Jack was much affected; more by the countenance and manner of the
sufferer, perhaps, than by his words. She drew nearer to the side of
her husband's pallet, knelt, took his hands, and said solemnly,

"Stephen Spike, from the bottom of my heart, I _do_ forgive you; and I
shall pray to God that he will pardon your sins as freely and more
marcifully than I now pardon all, and try to forget all that you have
done to me."

Spike clasped his hands, and again he tried to pray; but the habits of
a whole life are not to be thrown off at will; and he who endeavors to
regain, in his extremity, the moments that have been lost, will find,
in bitter reality, that he has been heaping mountains on his own soul,
by the mere practice of sin, which were never laid there by the
original fall of his race. Jack, however, had disburthened her spirit
of a load that had long oppressed it, and, burying her face in the
rug, she wept.

"I wish, Molly," said the dying man, several minutes later, "I wish I
had never seen the brig. Until I got that craft, no thought of
wronging human being ever crossed my mind."

"It was the Father of Lies that tempts all to do evil, Stephen, and
not the brig which caused the sins."

"I wish I could live a year longer--_only_ one year; that is not much
to ask for a man who is not yet sixty."

"It is hopeless, poor Stephen. The surgeons say you cannot live one
day."

Spike groaned; for the past, blended fearfully with the future,
gleamed on his conscience with a brightness that appalled him. And
what is that future, which is to