as Dr. Woodford soon found in conversation with him, his
real convictions were all as to what personally affected him, and
his strong Protestant ingrain education, however he might have
disavowed it, no doubt had affected his point of view. He had
admired and been strongly influenced by the sight of real devotion
and holiness, though as his temptations and hatred of monotony
recurred, he had more than once swung back again. Then, however, he
had been revolted by the perception of the concessions to popular
superstition and the morality of a wicked state of society. His
real sense of any religion had been infused by Mrs. Woodford, and to
her belongings, and the faith they involved, he was clinging in
these last days.

Dr. Woodford could not but be glad that thus it was, not only on the
penitent's own account, but on that of the father, who might have
lost the comfort of finding him truly repentant in the shock of
finding a Popish priest at his bedside. And indeed the contrition
seemed to have gathered force in many a past fit of remorse, and now
was deep but not unhopeful.

In the evening the father and brother arrived. The Major was now an
old man, hale indeed, and with the beauty that a pure, self-
restrained life often sheds on an aged man. He was much shaken, and
when he came in, with his own white hair on his shoulders, and
actually tears in his eyes, the look that passed between them was
like nothing but the spirit of the parable so often, but never too
often, repeated.

Peregrine, who never perhaps had spent a happy or fearless hour with
him, and had dreaded his coming, felt probably for the first time
the mysterious sense of home and peace given by the presence of
those between whom there is the tie of blood. Not many words
passed; he was hardly in a state for them, but from that time, he
was never so happy as when his father and brother were beside him;
and they seldom left him, the Major sitting day and night by his
pillow attending to his wants, or saying words of prayer.

The old man had become much softened, by nothing more perhaps than
watching the way in which his daughter-in-law dealt with the
manifestations of the Oakshott imp nature in her eldest child.

"If I had understood," he said to Dr. Woodford. "If I had so
treated that poor boy, never would he have been as he is now."

"You acted according to your conscience."

"Ah, sir! a man does not grow old without learning that the
conscie