Though your sins be red as scarlet,
       He shall wash them white as wool.

Garth seemed to be touched.  His hard face softened; his lips parted, and his eyes began to swim.

When the singing ceased, he repeated the refrain beneath his breath.  “What if one could but think it?” he muttered, and dropped his head into his hands.

Rotha stepped up and tapped his shoulder.

“Mr. Garth,” she said.

He started, and then struggled to hide his discomposure.  There was only one way in which a man of his temperament and resource could hope to do it—­he snarled.

“What do you want with me?”

“It was a beautiful hymn,” said Rotha, ignoring his question.

“Do you think so?” he growled, and turned his head away.

“What if one could but think it?” she said, as if speaking as much to herself as to him.

Garth faced about, and looked at her with a scowl.

The girl’s eyes were as meek as an angel’s.

“It’s what I was thinking mysel’, that is,” he mumbled after a pause; then added aloud with an access of irritation, “Think what?”

“That there is pardon for us all, no matter what our sins—­pardon and peace.”

“Humph!”

“It is beautiful; religion is very beautiful, Mr. Garth.”

The blacksmith forced a short laugh.

“You’d best go and hire yourself to the Quakers.  They would welcome a woman preacher, no doubt”

She would have bartered away years of her life at this instant for one glimpse of what was going on in that man’s heart.  If she had found corruption there, sin and crime, she would have thanked God for it as for manna from above.  Rotha clutched the keys beneath her cloak and subdued her anger.

“You scarce seem yourself to-day, Mr. Garth,” she said.

“All the better,” he replied, with a mocking laugh.  “I’ve heard that they say my own sel’ is a bad sel’.”

The words were hardly off his lips when he turned again sharply and faced Rotha with an inquiring look.  He had reminded himself of a common piece of his mother’s counsel; but in the first flash of recollection it had almost appeared to him that the words had been Rotha’s, not his.

The girl’s face was as tender as a Madonna’s.

“Maybe I am a little bit out of sorts to-day; maybe so.  I’ve felt daizt this last week end; I have, somehow.”

Rotha left him a minute afterwards.  Continuing her journey, she drew the bunch of keys from under her cloak and examined them.

They were the same that she had found attached to Wilson’s trunk on the night of her own and Mrs. Garth’s visit to the deserted cottage at Fornside.  There were perhaps twenty keys in all, but two only bore any signs of recent or frequent use.  One of these was marked with a cross scratched roughly on the flat of the ring.  The other had a piece of white tape wrapped about the shaft.  The rest of the keys were worn red with thick encrustation of rust.  And now, by the power of love, this girl with the face of an angel in its sweetness and simplicity—­this girl, usually as tremulous as a linnet—­was about to do what a callous man might shrink from.