orn out and done, but when I talked with Harry, he, not
having understanding, said: 'You're looking younger every day. If I heard
those kind of things I should say it was liver.'"

Aline no longer smiled, but sat watching him and listening gravely, and I
began to catch a glimmer of his meaning.

"The folks at chapel had not forgotten me," continued Lee, "and they were
in trouble. There was another man took up the work I left, but he went off
with t' brass they'd gathered for a new gallery, and they wrote they'd see
I got back the old shop if I come home again. And because I was weak and
fearful o' the grinding struggle over there, I did not go. They wrote
another letter, but still I bided, until I read this paper."

He spread out a soiled English journal, and, running a crooked finger
across it, read out the headings, with extracts, at some of which,
remembering Aline's presence, I frowned. It was only a plain record of
what happens in the crowded cities of the older land--a murder, two
suicides, and the inevitable destitution and drunkenness, but he looked up
with kindling eyes.

"I could not shut my ears. The call was, 'come an' help us,' an' I'm
going. Going back out of the sunshine into the slums o' Lancashire."

This, I reflected, was the man who had once attempted my life--ignorant,
intolerant, and filled with prejudice, but at least faithful to the light
within him; and I knew that even if he failed signally, the aim he set
before himself was a great one. No suitable answer, however, suggested
itself, and I was thankful when Aline said, "It is a very fine thing to
do. But what about your daughter?"

"Her place was by her husband," said Lee; "but her husband left her.
Minnie is going back with me. Your brother will take me to see her
to-morrow."

I did so, at the risk of overtaxing the horses by a trying journey through
softening snow; but I sent a telegram to Minnie, and when we left the cars
she was there to meet us, looking weak and ill, with shadows in the
hollows round her eyes.

"It was very good of you to come, father," she said. "I was an undutiful
daughter, and I suffered for it. Now I have broken the law, and the police
troopers could take me to prison. But I am tired of it all, father, and if
you will have me I am going home with you."

"Thou'rt my own lass," said Lee; and I found something required my
presence elsewhere, for Minnie was shaken by emotion as she clung to him.
And yet this tearf