sperous life of Roland Sefton
had been encompassed round by these walls.

But the dead past must bury the dead. If there had ever been a deep,
buried, hidden hope, that a possible return to something of the old life
lay in the unknown future, it was now utterly uprooted. Such a return
was only possible over the ruined lives and broken hearts of Felicita
and his children. If he made himself known, though he was secure against
prosecution, the story of his former crime would revive, and spread
wider, joined with the fair name of Felicita, than it would have done
when he was merely a fraudulent banker in a country town. However true
it might be what Phebe maintained, that he might have suffered the
penalty of his sin, and afterwards retrieved the past, whilst his
children were too young to feel the full bitterness of the shame, it was
too late to do it now. The name he had dishonored was forever forfeited.
His return to his former life was hedged up on every hand.

But a new courage was awaking in him, which helped him to grapple with
his despair. He would bury the dead past, and go on into the future
making the best of his life, maimed and marred as it was by his own
folly. He was still in the prime of his age, thirty years younger than
Mr. Clifford, whose intellect was as keen and clear as ever; there was a
long span of time stretching before him, to be used or misused.

"Come unto Me all ye that be weary, and heavy laden, and I will give
you rest." He seemed to see the words in the quaint upright characters
in which old Marlowe had carved them under the crucifix. He had fancied
he knew what coming to Christ meant in those old days of his, when he
was reputed a religious man, and was first and foremost in all religious
and philanthropic schemes, making his trespass more terrible and
pernicious than if it had been the transgression of a worldly man. But
it was not so when he came to Christ this morning. He was a
broken-hearted man, who had cut himself off from all human ties and
affections, and who was longing to feel that he was not forsaken of the
universal Brother and Saviour. His cry was, "My soul thirsteth for thee;
my flesh longeth for thee, in a dry and weary land, where no water is."
It was his own fault that he was in the dry and weary wilderness; but
oh! if Christ would not forsake him then, would dwell with him, even in
this desert made desolate by himself, then at last he might find peace
to his soul.

The