ed in trying to stop crying."

"Well since then," resumed Aleck, "the feeling doesn't seem to have gone
off. I don't mean I don't care for things, because you know I like
everything very much--our games, and the books, and madrepores; but I
feel as if before my accident God and heaven and the Bible were all
being put by, and got ready, for the time when one was old and grown up,
and I've felt so different since then. It was when I felt so frightened
at the thought of what a naughty boy I was, and of all the bad things I
had done, and began to tell Jesus about it--in my heart, you know, for I
couldn't speak--and remembered he was so good and kind he never turned
any one away, and so felt sure he had heard me, that I began to think so
differently."

At this point of Aleck's narration I broke in impetuously with--

"Oh, Aleck! for _you_ to be feeling like that--you, who had only felt
angry--what would you have done if you had been me?" And then I
proceeded, with feelings of unconcealed horror, to tell him of my misery
during the few days succeeding the loss of the boat; the terrible walk
home that morning; the lonely terrors of the nights; and my feelings at
church with that verse always sounding in my ears, "If I regard iniquity
in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."

Before I had finished my story Aleck had got hold of one of my hands,
and was stroking it as if he had been a girl. "You see," I said, "I was
feeling rather like you, only I couldn't know I was forgiven, with that
dreadful sin that no one knew of."

"We had both done wrong," Aleck replied; "it doesn't much signify which
of us was worst. Willie, do you know I want us always to do something
together that we haven't done before."

"What is it?" I inquired.

"I should like us to read a little bit of the Bible together every day,
quite for our own selves; not like a lesson, you know, nor even having
auntie to explain it to us, but just for our own selves, like when I
have one of papa's or mamma's letters to read. I think it would help us
to remember the really great things better, like auntie's text in my
room."

I need scarcely say that the habit--afterwards continued, whenever
practicable, through our school-life--was at once begun. In fact,
Aleck's merest wish was a law to me; for all through the winter months
every opportunity of rendering him any service was hailed with delight.
I could never forget that his weakness and suffering were the result