, unless some good fortune
might save him. There might, however, be such good fortune in store
for him. As Lady Elizabeth had said, a sheep that was very dark in
colour might become white again. If it be not so, what is all this
doctrine of repentance in which we believe?

Blackness in a male sheep in regard to the other sin is venial
blackness. Whether the teller of such a tale as this should say so
outright, may be matter of dispute; but, unless he say so, the teller
of this tale does not know how to tell his tale truly. Blackness such
as that will be all condoned, and the sheep received into almost any
flock, on condition, not of repentance or humiliation or confession,
but simply of change of practice. The change of practice in certain
circumstances and at a certain period becomes expedient; and if it be
made, as regards tints in the wool of that nature, the sheep becomes
as white as he is needed to be. In this respect our sheep had been as
black as any sheep, and at this present period of his life had need
of much change before he would be fit for any decent social herding.

And then there are the shades of black which come from
conviviality,--which we may call table blackness,--as to which there
is an opinion constantly disseminated by the moral newspapers of
the day, that there has come to be altogether an end of any such
blackness among sheep who are gentlemen. To make up for this, indeed,
there has been expressed by the piquant newspapers of the day an
opinion that ladies are taking up the game which gentlemen no longer
care to play. It may be doubted whether either expression has in
it much of truth. We do not see ladies drunk, certainly, and we do
not see gentlemen tumbling about as they used to do, because their
fashion of drinking is not that of their grandfathers. But the love
of wine has not gone out from among men; and men now are as prone
as ever to indulge their loves. Our black sheep was very fond of
wine,--and also of brandy, though he was wolf enough to hide his
taste when occasion required it.

Very early in life he had come from France to live in England, and
had been placed in a cavalry regiment, which had, unfortunately for
him, been quartered either in London or its vicinity. And, perhaps
equally unfortunate for him, he had in his own possession a small
fortune of some L500 a year. This had not come to him from his
father; and when his father had died in Paris, about two years before
the da