erish, it was no wonder that he stood on the brink of
despair.

But he was not forsaken utterly. When he was ready to perish, a
countryman of his own found him, and, for his country's sake, befriended
him. He took him from the poisoned air of a tropical city away to the
country, amid whose hills and slopes reigns perpetual spring; and here,
under the influences of a well-ordered home, he regained health both of
body and of mind, and found also in his countryman and benefactor a firm
and faithful friend.

Now, indeed, he began life anew. Bound by many ties of gratitude to his
employer and friend, he strove to do his duty, and to honour the trust
reposed in him; and he did not strive in vain. During the years that
followed, he became known as an honourable and a successful man; and
when at last, partly for purposes of business and partly with a view to
the re-establishment of his health, he determined to return home for a
time, he was comparatively a man of means.

He had all this time been doing one wrong and foolish thing, however.
He had kept silence towards his mother. He had not forgotten her. He
made many a plan, and dreamed many a dream, of the time when, with all
stains wiped from his name and his life, he would return to make her
forget all that was painful in the past. He had never thought of her
all these years but as the honoured and prosperous mistress of Glen
Elder. It had never come into his mind that, amid the chances and
changes of life, she might have to leave the place which had been the
home of her youth and her middle age.

When he returned, to find a stranger in his mother's place, it was a
terrible shock. All that he could learn concerning her was that she had
had no choice but to give up the farm, and that on leaving it she had
found a humble but welcome shelter in a neighbouring county; but whether
she was there still, or whether she was even alive, they could not tell
him.

As he stood before the closed door of what had once been his home, it
seemed to him that a mark more fearful than that of Cain was upon him.
Heart-sick with remorse, he turned away. Not daring to make further
inquiries, lest he might learn the worst, he went on, past familiar
places, with averted eyes, feeling in his misery that the guilt of his
mother's death must rest upon his sinful soul unless he might hear her
living lips pronounce the pardon of which he knew himself to be
unworthy.

God was merciful to