d the tale's true, mates. Roland Sefton, o'
Riversborough, cheated me out o' all my hard earnings--one hundred and
nineteen pounds--as I'd trusted him with, and drove me to drink. I were
a steady man till then, as steady as the best of ye; and he were a fine,
handsome, fair-spoken gentleman as ever walked; and we poor folks
trusted him as if he'd been God Almighty. There was a old deaf and dumb
man, called Marlowe, lost six hundred pound by him, and it broke his
heart; he never held his head up after, and he died. Me, it drove to
drink. That's the father o' the parson who stands here telling you about
Jesus Christ, and maybe trusted with your money, as I trusted mine with
him as cheated me. It's a true tale, mates, if God Almighty struck me
dead for it this moment."

There was such a tone of truth in the hoarse and passionate tones, which
grew steadier as the speaker gained assurance by the silence of the
audience, that there was not one there who did not believe the story.
Even Felix, listening with white face and flaming eyes, dared not cry
out that the accusation was a lie. Horrible as it was, he could not say
to himself that it was all untrue. There came flashing across his mind
confused reminiscences of the time when his father had disappeared from
out of his life. He remembered asking his mother how long he would be
away, and did he never write to her? and she had answered him that he
was too young to understand the truth about his father. Was it possible
that this was the truth?

In after years he never forgot that sultry evening, with the close,
noisome atmosphere of the hot mission-hall, and the confused buzzing of
many voices, which after a short silence began to hum in his ears. The
drunkard was still standing in the doorway, the very wreck and ruin of a
man; and every detail of his loathsome, degraded appearance was burnt in
on Felix's brain. He felt stupefied and bewildered--as if he had
received almost a death-blow. But in his inmost soul a cry went up to
heaven, "Lord, Thou also hast been a man!"

Then he saw that the cross lay before him in his path. "Whosoever will
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow
me." It had seemed to Felix at times as if he had never been called upon
to bear any cross. But now it lay there close before him. He could not
take another step forward unless he lifted it up and laid it on his
shoulders, whatever its weight might be. The cross of shame