wed
the grace. But Robert Bruce was ignorant of how little Annie knew about
the investment of her property. He took her freedom of action for the
result of the knowledge that she paid her way, whereas Annie followed
her own impulse, and never thought about the matter. Indeed, with the
reticence of Scotch people, none of her friends had given her any
information about her little fortune. Had Bruce known this, there would
have been no work too constant for her, and no liberty too small.

Thomas did not doubt that Robert Bruce had stolen the note. But he did
not see yet what he ought to do about it. The thing would be hard to
prove, and the man who would steal would lie. But he bitterly regretted
that such a man should have found his way into their communion.

CHAPTER LIX.

At length the corn was gathered in, all over the valley of the two
rivers. The wool of the sheep grows again after they are shorn, to keep
them warm in the winter: when the dry stubble sticks up short and
bristly over the fields, to keep them warm "He scattereth his snows
like wool."

The master returned from the sea-coast, bringing Truffey with him,
radiant with life. Nothing could lengthen that shrunken limb, but in
the other and the crutch together he had more than the function of two.

And the master was his idol.

And the master was a happier man. The scene of his late failure had
begun to fade a little from his brain. The expanse of the church and
the waiting people was no longer a vision certain to arise in the
darkness that surrounds sleep. He had been loving and helping; and love
and help had turned into a great joy, whose tide washed from out his
heart the bitterness of his remembered sin. When we love truly, all
oppression of past sin will be swept away. Love is the final atonement,
of which and for which the sacrifice of the atonement was made. And
till this atonement is made in every man, sin holds its own, and God is
not all in all.

So the earth and all that was therein did the master good. And he came
back able to look people in the face--humble still, but no longer
humiliated. And when the children gathered once more on a Monday
morning, with the sad feeling that the holidays were over, the master's
prayer was different from what it used to be, and the work was less
irksome than before, and school was not so very hateful after all. Even
the Shorter Catechism was not the instrument of torture which it had
been wont t