that any
injustice has been done me, except those anonymous letters and the word
of that strange horseman who waylaid me on my tramp and thrust a bag of
gold in my hands, with the words, 'You never intended to kill Henry
Lytton, and you never killed him. Some one else intended to kill him,
and some one else killed him.'"

"Have you ever heard anything more of that mysterious horseman?"

"Not one word."

"Have you no suspicion of his identity?"

"None, beyond the strong conviction that I feel that he himself was the
homicide and the writer of the anonymous letters."

"Well, I can not tell you why, but I always felt persuaded of your
innocence, even before the coming of those anonymous letters, and even
while _you_ were bitterly accusing yourself."

"You knew it from intuition--inward teaching."

"May I ask you, Hartman, _why_ after you discovered that you had nothing
to do with the death of Henry Lytton, you still determined to burden
yourself with the support and education of his children--a duty that was
first assumed by you as an atonement for an irreparable injury you
supposed you had done them?"

"Why I still resolved to care for them after I learned that I had
nothing to do with their great loss? Indeed I can not tell you.
Perhaps--partly because I sympathized with them in a sorrow that was
common to us all, in so far as we all suffered from the same cause;
partly, I also think, because it was pleasant to have _some one_ to live
for and work for; partly because I was so grateful to find myself free
from blood guiltiness that I wished to educate those children as a
thank-offering to Heaven! It was also very pleasant to me to think of
this boy at college and this girl at school, and to hope that some day
they might come to look upon me with affection instead of with horror.
And then I took so much pride in talking to my brother miners about my
son at the University and my daughter at the Academy! And then, again,
your letters--every one of them telling of the progress my children made
and the credit they were doing me. I tell you, sir, all this was a great
comfort to me, and made me feel at home in this strange, lonesome
world," said the exile, warmly.

"Hartman, you have a noble soul! You must have made a very great
pecuniary sacrifice for the sake of these young people," said the
minister, earnestly.

"No, sir; no sacrifice at all. That was the strangest part of it; for it
seemed to me the more I gave