ery words I writ," said the Trapper, gravely.

"And I saw more than the words written on the bark, John Norton,"
resumed the man. "For looking at it I saw all my past life and the
evil of it and what a scoundrel I had become; my eyes saw with a new
sight, and I said, when the sun comes I will rise and go to the man
who wrote those words and tell him what they did for me. And here I
am, a vagabond who has accepted your invitation to spend Christmas
with you, and here in this pack are the skins and the traps I have
stolen from you, and I ask your forgiveness and that you will take my
hand in proof of it, that I may come to your table feeling that I am a
man, and a vagabond no longer."

"Heart and hand be yours now and forever, Shanty Jim," cried the
Trapper, joyfully; and, rising from his chair, he met the outstretched
hand of the repentant vagabond with his own hearty grasp. "And may the
Lord be with ye ever more."

"Amen!" It was Wild Bill, the once drunkard, who said the sweet word
of prayer and assent, and he said it softly. And that murmur of amen
and amen went round the great table like the murmur of prayer and of
praise. And then it passed out and rose up from the cabin, and the air
in its joy passed it on, and the stars took it up and thrilled it
around their vast courses of glorified light, and through the high
heavens it sang itself onward from order to order of angels until it
reached Him whom no man hath seen or may ever see, in all and over
all, God! blessed forever!

Has Nature knowledge? Is she conscious of the evil and the good among
men, and has she a heart that saddens at their sorrow and rejoices in
their joy? Perhaps. For, suddenly, even as the two men joined their
hands, the fury of the storm checked itself, and a stillness--the
stillness of a great calm--fell on the woods, and through the sudden,
the unexpected, the blessed stillness, to the ears of one of the two
men--yea, to him who had forgiven--there came the melody of bells
swinging slowly and softly to and fro.

Oh, bells, invisible bells! Bells of the soul, bells high in heaven,
swing softly, swing low, swing sweet, and swing ever for us, one and
all, when we at our tables sit feasting. Swing for us living, swing
for us dying, and may the cause of your swinging be our forgiving and
forgetting.

"John Norton," said the man, "you have called me Shanty Jim, and that
is well, for in the woods here that is my name, but in the city where
I l