rath at Donald McFarlane.

As he slowly walked up stairs to Christine he determined to make to
her a full confession of the deed he had meditated. But when he
reached her bedside he saw that she was nearly dead. She smiled
faintly and said,

"Send all away, James. I must speak alone with you, dear; we are going
to part, my husband."

Then he knelt down by her side and held her cold hands, and the
gracious tears welled up in his hot eyes, and he covered them with the
blessed rain.

"O James, how you have suffered--since six o'clock."

"You know then, Christine! I would weep tears of blood over my sin. O
dear, dear wife, take no shameful memory of me into eternity with
you."

"See how I trust you, James. Here is poor, weak Donald's note. I know
now you will never use it against him. What if your six hours were
lengthened out through life--through eternity? I ask no promise from
you now, dear."

"But I give it. Before God I give it, with all my heart. My sin has
found me out this night. How has God borne with me all these years?
Oh, how great is his mercy!"

Then Christine told him how he had revealed his wicked plot, and how
wonderful strength had been given her to defeat it; and the two souls,
amid their parting sighs and tears, knew each other as they had never
done through all their years of life.

For a week James remained in his own room. Then Christine was laid
beside her father, and the shop was reopened, and the household
returned to its ways. But James was not seen in house or shop, and the
neighbors said,

"Kirsty Cameron has had a wearisome sickness, and nae doobt her
gudeman was needing a rest. Dootless he has gane to the Hielands a
bit."

But it was not northward James Blackie went. It was south; south past
the bonnie Cumberland Hills and the great manufacturing towns of
Lancashire and the rich valleys of Yorkshire; southward until he
stopped at last in London. Even then, though he was weary and sick and
the night had fallen, he did not rest. He took a carriage and drove at
once to a fashionable mansion in Baker street. The servant looked
curiously at him and felt half inclined to be insolent to such a
visitor.

"Take that card to your master at once," he said in a voice whose
authority could not be disputed, and the man went.

His master was lying on a sofa in a luxuriously-furnished room,
playing with a lovely girl about four years old, and listening
meanwhile to an enthusiastic account