sat with his hands clasped, leaning back in his
chair, and glancing half aside at her fair countenance, as if a feeling
of shame oppressed him, "you have been my good angel. I owe you much,
more than I can ever repay. Had it not been for you, I should have gone
down to my grave a miserable, wretched being, with no one to care for
me; but you awoke me to a sense of better things. I have not always
been as I am now, but care and disappointment came upon me, and those I
loved were lost through my fault, by my hard treatment. I see it now,
but I thought then they were alone to blame. I once had wealth, but it
was dissipated almost, not all, and I feared lest the remainder would be
lost; then I became what you have known me, a wretched, grovelling
miser. I had a daughter, she was young and fair, and as bright as you
are, but she desired to live as she had been accustomed to, not aware of
my losses, and I stinted her of everything except the bare necessaries
of life. She had many admirers: one of them was wealthy, but Fanny
regarded him with dislike; the other, a fine youth, was, I thought,
penniless. She returned his affection, and I ordered him never again to
enter my doors. My child bore my treatment meekly, but one day she came
into my presence, and in a calm but firm voice said she would no longer
be a burden to me; that she was ready to toil for my support were it
requisite, but that she was well aware that I was possessed of ample
means to obtain the comforts as well as the necessaries of life.
Enraged, I ordered her, with a curse, to quit my house, declaring that I
would never see her again. She obeyed me too faithfully, and became the
young man's wife, and she and her husband left England. I heard shortly
afterwards that the ship in which they sailed had been wrecked. That
such was the case I had every reason to believe as from that day I lost
all trace of them. Hardhearted as I was, I believed that my child had
met her just doom for the disobedience into which I myself had driven
her, and having no one to care for, I sank into the wretched object you
found me. You will think of me, Mary, with pity rather than scorn when
I am gone?"

"Do not speak so, Mr Shank; I have long, long pitied you," said Mary,
soothingly. "You are not what you were; you mourn your past life, and
you know the way by which you can be reconciled to a merciful God."

The old man gazed at her fair countenance. "No other human bei