beauty
which was not without its influence even on those poor famine-stricken
creatures, who were watching with such sympathetic solicitude beside
their dying companion.

Suddenly Walford's mutterings ceased, an expression of joyous surprise
lighted up his ghastly wasted features, he seized George's hand with a
firm clasp in one of his, and, raising the other, exclaimed--

"Hark! what was that?"

"I heard nothing, Ned," answered George tremulously; he knew
instinctively now that the last dread moment was close at hand,--"I
heard nothing; what was it?"

"My mother," answered Walford,--"my mother calling to me as she used to
call me, when I was a little innocent child, when she--ha! there it is
again. It is her own dear, well-remembered voice. She is calling me to
go to her; I must not stay out at play any longer; I did so last night,
you know, and it grieved her. She said I was a naughty, disobedient
boy, and I made her cry. But she forgave me and kissed me after I had
said my prayers, and--and--`Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be
Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is done in
heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; _and forgive us our
trespasses_.'"

As the first words of this simple, beautiful prayer issued from
Walford's dying lips, George and Tom threw themselves upon their knees
in the bottom of the boat, their hands clasped, their heads bent, and
their hearts earnestly uplifted to Him who was thus mercifully taking
the poor sufferer to Himself. The first sentence was spoken with
child-like simplicity, but, after that, every word was uttered with
increasing fervour and an evident conception of its momentous import,
until the clause was reached, "and forgive us our trespasses," which was
breathed forth with a solemn intensity that thrilled the very souls of
the listeners. Then the voice suddenly ceased, and as George looked up
with startled eyes he saw Walford's lips tremble, a radiant smile parted
them for an instant, and he sank heavily back on the boat's thwart--
dead.

George gazed long and earnestly in the face of the dead man, his
thoughts travelling rapidly back to that eventful evening when they two
met--the one going humbly and doubtingly to declare his love, the other
hurrying triumphantly away from a successful wooing; and Leicester
grieved, as he pictured the sorrow of that loving woman's heart, when
the news should be taken to her of the sad event just