should become burdensome to them;
and, bad as I am, they are so much worse that I can even now have no
fellowship with them."

Thus the unhappy man ran on, eagerly discharging, as it were, at once
his long pent-up feelings and thoughts. For weeks and months he had
been wandering about, nearly starved, and ill-treated and despised by
his companions in crime. And this man had been in the rank of a
gentleman, and had been educated as one, and had once felt as one! I
know to a certainty that there are numbers of such wandering about the
world, and others who have died miserably,--outcasts from their friends
and, more terrible fate, from their God,--who little thought when they
made their first downward step in the path of sin to what a fearful
termination it was leading them.

I let our unhappy prisoner grow calm before I again spoke to him.

"You asked me," I said, "how I know your name, and who I am." And I
then went over many of the incidents of his early life, when he was a
happy, pleasant-mannered little boy at home.

He made no reply; but he seemed to guess who I was, and bent down his
head between his hands. I saw tears dropping from between his fingers.
It was a good sign. I thought of the parable of the prodigal son. "He
has been eating the husks: perhaps he will soon say, `I will arise and
go to my Father.'" I prayed that the Holy Spirit would strive mightily
with him, and make him feel not only his sad moral and physical
condition, but his terribly dangerous spiritual state. Such prayers
are, I believe, never made in vain.

I was eager, I must own, to begin my mornings work, but I did not wish
at that moment to interrupt the man's thoughts. I waited therefore
patiently till he should speak. After a time he lifted up his head, and
said, "Who are you?" I told him that I remembered him as a boy--that
his countenance was unchanged--and that his father had been my
benefactor.

"Thank God for that! if such as I am may utter that name," he exclaimed.
"You'll not have me hung, then; you'll not deliver me up to a shameful
death?"

"No indeed, Arthur," I answered; "I will rather do my best to protect
you. I do not know what crimes you have committed, and I do not wish to
know; but I hope to see you restored to tranquillity of mind, and that
you may find joy and peace in believing on that one only Saviour,
through whom you can obtain pardon for your transgressions and
reconciliation with God."

I the