it.'

'I thank you,' returned her visitor, pressing her hand hastily. 'I am
much obliged to you. You do me justice, I assure you. You were going to
say, that I, who know the story of John Carker's life--'

'May think it pride in me,' she continued, 'when I say that I am proud
of him! I am. You know the time was, when I was not--when I could not
be--but that is past. The humility of many years, the uncomplaining
expiation, the true repentance, the terrible regret, the pain I know
he has even in my affection, which he thinks has cost me dear, though
Heaven knows I am happy, but for his sorrow I--oh, Sir, after what I
have seen, let me conjure you, if you are in any place of power, and are
ever wronged, never, for any wrong, inflict a punishment that cannot be
recalled; while there is a GOD above us to work changes in the hearts He
made.'

'Your brother is an altered man,' returned the gentleman,
compassionately. 'I assure you I don't doubt it.'

'He was an altered man when he did wrong,' said Harriet. 'He is an
altered man again, and is his true self now, believe me, Sir.'

'But we go on, said her visitor, rubbing his forehead, in an absent
manner, with his hand, and then drumming thoughtfully on the table, 'we
go on in our clockwork routine, from day to day, and can't make out,
or follow, these changes. They--they're a metaphysical sort of thing.
We--we haven't leisure for it. We--we haven't courage. They're not
taught at schools or colleges, and we don't know how to set about it. In
short, we are so d-------d business-like,' said the gentleman, walking
to the window, and back, and sitting down again, in a state of extreme
dissatisfaction and vexation.

'I am sure,' said the gentleman, rubbing his forehead again; and
drumming on the table as before, 'I have good reason to believe that
a jog-trot life, the same from day to day, would reconcile one to
anything. One don't see anything, one don't hear anything, one don't
know anything; that's the fact. We go on taking everything for granted,
and so we go on, until whatever we do, good, bad, or indifferent, we do
from habit. Habit is all I shall have to report, when I am called upon
to plead to my conscience, on my death-bed. "Habit," says I; "I was
deaf, dumb, blind, and paralytic, to a million things, from habit."
''Very business-like indeed, Mr What's-your-name,' says Conscience,
''but it won't do here!"'

The gentleman got up and walked to the window again and bac