e the alternative, but caught up the word in
a great cry.

"Blasphemous! Why, man alive! for what are you taking me? Do you think
this is some unholy jest? Can't you see that I am in deadly earnest?
Come and see me where I live--" he caught me by the arm, as if he would
drag me away then and there, "among the poor in Hoxton. You scarcely
know where Hoxton is--I didn't when I was a man of ease like
yourself--that wilderness of grey despair where the sun of the world
scarcely shines, let alone the Light of God. Come and see for yourself,
man, whether I am lying!"

Then it dawned upon me that the man had been talking from innermost
depths, that he was almost terrifyingly sincere.

"I must ask you to pardon me," said I, "for appearing to doubt your good
faith. You must attribute it to my entire unfamiliarity with the terms
of Evangelical piety."

He looked at me queerly for a moment, and then, in the quiet tones of a
man of the world, said, smiling pleasantly:

"Very many years ago I had the pleasure of knowing your grandfather, the
late baronet. May I say that you remind me of him?"

I have never heard an apology more gracefully and tactfully accepted.
For an unregenerate second he had become the gallant Rupert Mainwaring
again, and showed me wherein might lie his attraction.

"Pray be seated," said he, more gravely, "and allow me to explain."

He unfolded his story. It was well, said he, that an outsider (I an
outsider in that familiar room!) should hear it. I was at liberty to
make it public. Indeed, publicity was what he earnestly craved. As far
as my memory serves me, for my wits were whirling as I listened, the
following is an epitome of his narrative:

He had been a man of sin--not only in the vague ecclesiastical sense,
but in downright, practical earnest. He had committed every imaginable
crime, save the odd few that lead to penal servitude and the gallows. He
drank, he betrayed women, he cheated at cards, he had an evil reputation
on the turf. His companions were chosen from the harlotry and knavery
of the civilised world. He had lured Judith from her first husband, thus
breaking his heart, poor man, so that he died soon after. He had married
Judith, and had deserted her for a barmaid whom in her turn he had
abandoned. He wallowed, to use his own expression, in the trough
of iniquity. He was, as I had always understood, about as choice a
blackguard as it would be possible to meet outside a gaol. One day