l.

On the other side of the spruce hedge knelt John Churchill with bowed
head. The tears were running freely down his face, but there was a
new, tender light in his eyes. The bitterness and despair had fallen
out of his heart, leaving a great peace and a dawning hope in their
place. Bless that loyal little soul! There was something to live for
after all--there was a motive to make the struggle worthwhile. He must
justify his son's faith in him; he must strive to make himself worthy
of this sweet, pure, unselfish love that was offered to him, as a
divine draught is offered to the parched lips of a man perishing from
thirst. Aye, and, God helping him, he would. He would redeem the
past. He would go west, but under his own name. His little son should
go with him; he would work hard; he would pay back the money he had
embezzled, as much of it as he could, if it took the rest of his life
to do so. For his boy's sake he must cleanse his name from the
dishonour he had brought on it. Oh, thank God, there was somebody to
care, somebody to love him, somebody to believe him when he said
humbly, "I repent." Under his breath he said, looking heavenward:

"God be merciful to me, a sinner."

Then he stood up erectly, went through the gate and over the grass to
the motionless little figure with its face buried in its arms.

"Joey boy," he said huskily. "Joey boy."

Joey sprang to his feet with tears still glistening in his eyes. He
saw before him a bent, grey-headed man looking at him lovingly and
wistfully. Joey knew who it was--the father he had never seen. With a
glad cry of welcome he sprang into the outstretched arms of the man
whom his love had already won back to God.

The Schoolmaster's Letters

At sunset the schoolmaster went up to his room to write a letter to
her. He always wrote to her at the same time--when the red wave of the
sunset, flaming over the sea, surged in at the little curtainless
window and flowed over the pages he wrote on. The light was rose-red
and imperial and spiritual, like his love for her, and seemed almost
to dye the words of the letters in its own splendid hues--the letters
to her which she never was to see, whose words her eyes never were to
read, and whose love and golden fancy and rainbow dreams never were to
be so much as known by her. And it was because she never was to see
them that he dared to write them, straight out of his full heart,
taking the exquisite pleasure of telling