a constrained voice.

"Oh, sir, indeed I do," he exclaimed, bursting into tears. "Mr
Percival said I had destroyed years and years of hard work, and that I
can never, never, never make up for it, or repair it again. Oh, sir,
indeed I didn't know how much mischief I was doing; I was in a wicked
passion then, but I would give my right-hand not to have done it now.
Oh, sir, can you ever forgive me?" he asked, in a tone of pitiable
despair.

"Have you asked God's forgiveness for your passionate and revengeful
spirit, Evson?" said the same constrained voice.

"Oh, sir, I have, and I know God has forgiven me. Indeed I never knew,
I never thought before, that I could grow so wicked in a day. Oh, sir,
what shall I do to gain your forgiveness; I would do anything, sir," he
said, in a voice thick with sobs; "and if you forgave me, I could be
almost happy."

All this while Walter had not dared to look up in Mr Paton's face.
Abashed as he was, he could not bear to meet the only look which he
expected to find there, the old cold unpitying look of condemnation and
reproach. Even at that moment he could not help thinking that if Mr
Paton had understood him better, he would not have seemed to him so
utterly bad as then he must seem, with so recent an act of sin and folly
to bear witness against him.

He dared not look up through his eyes swimming with tears; but he had
not expected the kind and gentle touch of the trembling hand that rested
on his head as though it blessed him, and that smoothed again and again
his dark hair, and wiped the big drops away from his cheeks. He had not
expected the arm that raised him up from his kneeling position, and the
fingers that pushed back his hair from his forehead, and gently bent
back his head; or the pitying eyes, themselves dim, as though they were
about to well over with compassion--that looked so sorrowfully, yet so
kindly, into his own. He could not bear this. If Mr Paton had struck
him, as he did in the first moment of overwhelming anger; if he had
spurned him away, and ordered him any amount of punishment, it would
have been far easier to bear than this Christian gentleness; this ready
burying in pity and oblivion of the heaviest and most undeserved
calamity which the master had ever undergone at the hands of man.
Walter could not bear it; he flung himself on his knees again in a
passion of weeping, and clasped Mr Paton's knees, uttering in broken
sentences, "I can never ma