ing it off, handed it to him, saying, "It
should have been returned to you long ago."

"No, no," he said, quite solemnly, "it is in better keeping"; and he
took the tiny circlet of gold, and looked a moment at it, with its
shining cluster of brilliants, then gave it back to me.

"Have you no claim upon this?" I asked.

"On the ring? Oh, no,--none."

I put back with gladness the gift my father gave.

My time had come. The opportunity was most mysteriously given me to
redeem the promise made in the morning to Miss Lettie. I began, quite
timidly at first, to say that I had a message for Mr. Axtell, one from
his sister,--that I was to tell him of events whose occurrence he never
knew. He listened quietly, and I went on, commencing at the afternoon of
my imprisonment in the tower. I told every word that I had heard from
Miss Axtell,--no more. I trembled, it is true, when I came to the death
of Alice, and the new life that came to his elder sister. I came at last
to Mary. I told it all, the night when he came home, the very words he
had spoken to his sister I repeated in his ears, and he was quiet,
with a quietness Axtells know, I took out the package and opened it,
saying,--

"Your sister bade me give this to you."

The careful folds were unwrapped, and within a box lay only a silver
cup. Mr. Axtell took it into his hands, turned it to the light, and read
on it the name of my sister. I said to him,--

"Look on the inside."

He did. It was the fatal cup from which Mary Percival drank the
death-drops. Poisonous crystals lay in its depth. I told him so. I told
him how Bernard McKey, driven to despair, had made the fatal mistake.

I thought to have seen the sunlight of joy go up his face. I looked for
the glance whose coming his sister so dreaded; but it came not. My story
gave no joy to this strange man. He asked a few questions only, tending
to illumine points that my statement had left in uncertainty, and then,
when my last words were said, he rose up, and, standing before me, very
lowly pronounced these words:--

"Until to-night, Abraham Axtell never knew the weight of his guilt. He
must work out his punishment."

"How can you, Mr. Axtell? Heaven hath appointed forgiveness for the
repentant."

"And freedom from punishment, Miss Percival, is that, too, promised?"

"Strength to bear is freely offered in forgiveness."

"May it come to me! In all God's earth to-night there dwells not one
more needy of Heaven's