g ruin I have perhaps brought into
the world--O God! spare me a long life that I may make amends. Every
hour, every minute of it shall be devoted to your service."

As he stood there, with his eager boyish eyes upraised, a light seemed
to fall upon his face and illumine it. I had pushed the photograph back
to him, and it lay upon the table before him. He knelt and pressed his
lips to it.

"With your help, my darling; and His," he murmured.

The next morning he was married. She was a well-meaning girl, though her
piety, as with most people, was of the negative order; and her antipathy
to things evil much stronger than her sympathy with things good. For a
much longer time than I had expected she kept him straight--perhaps, a
little too straight. But at last there came the inevitable relapse.

I called upon him, in answer to an excited message, and found him in the
depths of despair. It was the old story, human weakness, combined with
lamentable lack of the most ordinary precautions against being found
out. He gave me details, interspersed with exuberant denunciations of
himself, and I undertook the delicate task of peacemaker.

It was a weary work, but eventually she consented to forgive him. His
joy, when I told him, was boundless.

"How good women are," he said, while the tears came into his eyes. "But
she shall not repent it. Please God, from this day forth, I'll----"

He stopped, and for the first time in his life the doubt of himself
crossed his mind. As I sat watching him, the joy died out of his face,
and the first hint of age passed over it.

"I seem to have been 'tidying up and starting afresh' all my life," he
said, wearily; "I'm beginning to see where the untidiness lies, and the
only way to get rid of it."

I did not understand the meaning of his words at the time, but learnt it
later on.

He strove according to his strength, and fell. By a miracle his
transgression was not discovered. The facts came to light long
afterwards, but at the time there were only two who knew.

[Illustration: "LYING DEAD."]

It was his last failure. Late one evening I received a hurriedly
scrawled note from his wife begging me to come round.

"A terrible thing has happened," it ran; "Charley went up to his study
after dinner, saying he had some 'tidying up,' as he calls it, to do,
and did not wish to be disturbed. In clearing out his desk he must have
handled carelessly the revolver that he always keeps there, not
re