“Forgive you?  What!  Do you forgive me?”

“You?  It is I am the brute; ever to have suspected you.  My conscience told me all along I was a brute!  And you—­have you not proved it to me in this last minute, Grace?—­proved to me that I am not worthy to kiss the dust from off your feet?”

Grace lay silent in his arms:  but her eyes were fixed upon him; her hands were folded on her bosom; her lips moved as if in prayer.

He put back her long tresses tenderly, and looked into her deep glorious eyes.

“There!  I have told you all.  Will you forgive my baseness; and take me, and teach me, about this Father in heaven, through poverty and wealth, for better, for worse, as my wife—­my wife?”

She leapt up at him suddenly, as if waking from a dream, and wreathed her arms about his neck.

“Oh, Mr. Thurnall! my dear, brave, wise, wonderful Mr. Thurnall! come home again!—­home to God!—­and home to me!  I am not worthy!  Too much happiness, too much, too much:—­but you will forgive, will you not,—­and forget—­forget?”

And so the old heart passed away from Thomas Thurnall:  and instead of it grew up a heart like his father’s; even the heart of a little child.