d woman, in a
big black bonnet, said, 'Poor soul!' so close to me, that I looked
down, and met her withered eyes, full of tears--for me!--and I said,
'Thank you, mother,' and she fingered the sleeve of my coat with her
trembling hand (the veins were standing out on it like ropes), and said,
'I've knowed trouble myself, my dear. The Lord bless yours to you!'"

"It must have been Betty Johnson," I interpolated; but the school-master
did not even look at me.

"You and I," he said, bending nearer to Cripple Charlie, "have had our
share of this life's pain so dealt out to us that any one can see and
pity us. My boy, take a fellow-sufferer's word for it, it is wise and
good not to shrink from the seeing and pitying. The weight of the cross
spreads itself and becomes lighter if one learns to suffer with others
as well as with oneself, to take pity and to give it. And as one learns
to be pained with the pains of others, one learns to be happy in their
happiness and comforted by their sympathy, and then no man's life can be
quite empty of pleasure. I don't know if my troubles have been lighter
or heavier ones than yours----"

The school-master stopped short, and turned his head so that his face
was almost hidden against his hand upon the wall. Charlie's big eyes
were full of tears, and I am sure I distinctly felt my ears poke
forwards on my head with anxious curiosity to catch what Mr. Wood would
tell us about that dreadful time of which he had never spoken.

"When I was your age," he said bluntly, "I was unusually lithe and
active and strong for mine. When I was half as old again, I was stronger
than any man I knew, and had many a boyish triumph out of my strength,
because I was slender and graceful, and this concealed my powers. I had
all the energies and ambitions natural to unusual vigour and manly
skill. I wanted to be a soldier, but it was not to be, and I spent my
youth at a desk in a house of business. I adapted myself, but none the
less I chafed whenever I heard of manly exploits, and of the delights
and dangers that came of seeing the world. I used to think I could bear
anything to cross the seas and see foreign climes. I did cross the
Atlantic at last--a convict in a convict ship (GOD help any man who
knows what that is!), and I spent the ten best years of my manhood at
the hulks working in chains. You've never lost freedom, my lad, so you
have never felt what it is not to be able to believe you've got it back.
Yo