nce he sat looking at her for some
time--then said,

"I hope I did not hurt you much."

"When?" she asked.

"Then," he answered.

"Oh, no; you did not hurt me--much!"

"Another time, I was very cruel to your aunt: do you think she will
forgive me!"

"Yes, I do."

"Then you have forgiven me?"

"Of course I have."

"Then of course God will forgive me too!"

"He will--if you leave off, you know, uncle."

"That's more than I can promise."

"If you try, he will help you."

"How can he? It is a second nature now!"

"He is your first nature. He can help you too by taking away the body
and its nature together."

"You're a fine comforter! God will help me to be good by taking away my
life! A nice encouragement to try! Hadn't I better kill myself and save
him the trouble!"

"It's not the dying, uncle! no amount of dying would ever make one
good. It might only make it less difficult to be good."

"But I might after all refuse to be good! I feel sure I should! He had
better let me alone!"

"God can do more than that to compel us to be good--a great deal more
than that! Indeed, uncle, we must repent."

He said no more for some minutes; then suddenly spoke again.

"I suppose you mean to marry that rascal of a tutor!" he said.

She started up, and called Donal. But to her relief he did not answer:
he was fast asleep.

"He would not thank you for the suggestion, I fear," she said, sitting
down again. "He is far above me!"

"Is there no chance for Forgue then?"

"Not the smallest. I would rather have died where you left me than--"

"If you love me, don't mention that!" he cried. "I was not
myself--indeed I was not! I don't know now--that is, I can't believe
sometimes I ever did it."

"Uncle, have you asked God to forgive you!"

"I have--a thousand times."

"Then I will never speak of it again."

In general, however, he was sullen, cantankerous, abusive. They were
all compassionate to him, treating him like a spoiled, but not the less
in reality a sickly child. Arctura thought her grandmother could not
have brought him up well; more might surely have been made of him. But
Arctura had him after a lifetime fertile in cause of self-reproach, had
him in the net of sore sickness, at the mercy of the spirit of God. He
was a bad old child--this much only the wiser for being old, that he
had found the ways of transgressors hard.

One night Donal, hearing him restless, got up from the chair where he
watc