tend to penitence for a past crime," said I,
getting grave, where gravity might avail for good, "I have nothing to
say. But Heaven does not work through the mean of man's deceit and
stratagem, and the good that comes of fear goes with returning courage."

Conscious of getting into a puling humour, I had no objection to an
interruption by the entrance of Rogers, who, having finished his work,
was probably intent upon the gratification which generally follows.

"I wish you joy of the boy and the diamonds," he said, as he seized
Graeme by the half-palsied hand. "The nurse is reconciled to the omen of
a fortune; and surely never was omen more auspicious, for no sooner had
the strange indication shown its mute vaticination than it disappeared,
that there might be no deduction of beauty from the favourite of the
gods." And drawing, with his lumbering hand, the tumbler near him, he
filled it two-thirds up of pure wine, and presently his lips grappled
with it like a camel at the bucket in the desert, with such effect that
the contents changed vessels in a twinkling.

"Disappeared!" said I musingly.

"Yea, temperance hath her demands on occasions," said he, thinking I
alluded to the exit of the wine, and not the ominous mark; "for there be
two kinds of this noble virtue, the jejune and the hearty, whereof the
former observes no plethoric gratifications, and the other is not averse
to an extreme of cordial indulgence."

"Disappeared!" said I in a harping way, once again, "and left the skin
discoloured."

"But it was there, and I saw it with these eyes," cried Graeme, "and the
doctor saw it, and Betha, but, thank God, not the mother."

"The vouchsafing of the eyes is an easy task," drawled Rogers. "The
truth of present fact is of the moment of experience as regards the
seer; but, as a moral entity, it never dies. The great Author of nature
has his intention in these mysterious signs. We know only that there are
two kinds of these God's finger-touches--the enduring and the
evanescent. That we have now witnessed was of the latter kind, which we
also call superficial in opposition to the other, which is painted on
the _rete mucosum_, and never goes off. The difference of indications
we know not, further than that a mysterious purpose is served by both.
But might I ask if ever there was any occasion on which the figure of
this card might, as connected with some thrilling incident, have been
impressed upon the imagination of the