Behind him at a little distance walked the two gamblers, pursuing him like a double shadow.  A bloodhound could not have been more eager than David was.  He trembled if an omnibus cut off his view for a single instant, and shuddered if the beggar turned a corner.

Unconscious of all this, the dog and his master wended their way homeward.  They crawled slowly and quietly across a street over which thundered an endless procession of vehicles; they moved like snails through the surf of the ocean of life.  Arriving at length at the door of a wretched tenement house, the blind man and his dog entered.

As he noted the squalor of the place, David murmured to himself, “Poor old man!  How low he has fallen!”

Several minutes passed in silence, while he stood reflecting on the doctor’s misery, his own new happiness and the opportunities and duties which the adventure had opened and imposed.  At last he said to his friend, “Do you know where we are?  I was so absorbed that I didn’t notice our route at all.”

“Yes,” Mantel answered.  “I have marked every turn of the way.”

“Could you find the place again?”

“Without the slightest difficulty.”

“Be sure, for if you wish to help me, as I think you do, you will have to come often.  I have made my plans in the few moments in which I have been standing here, and am determined to devote my life, if need be, to this poor creature whom I have so wronged.  I must get him out of this filthy hole into some cheerful place.  I will atone for the past if I can!  Atone!  What a word that is!  With what stunning force its meaning dawns upon me!  How many times I have heard and uttered it without comprehension.  But somehow I now see in it a revelation of the sweetest possibility of life.  Oh!  I am a changed man; I will make atonement!  Come, let us go.  I am anxious to begin.  But no, I must proceed with caution.  How do I know that this is his permanent home?  He may be only lodging for the night, and when you come to-morrow, he may be gone!  Go in, Mantel, and make sure that we shall find him here to-morrow.  Go, and while you find out all you can about him, I will begin to search for such a place as I want to put him in.  We will part for the present; but when we meet to-night we shall have much to talk about.  I will tell you the whole of this long and bitter story.  I am so happy, Mantel.  You can’t understand!  I have something to live for now.  I will work, oh, you do not know how I will work to make this atonement.  What a word it is!  It is music to my ears.  Atonement!”

And so in the lexicon of human experience he had at last discovered the meaning of one of the great words of our language.  After all, experience is the only exhaustive dictionary, and the definitions it contains are the only ones which really burn themselves into the mind or fully interpret the significances of life.

To every man language is a kind of fossil poetry, until experience makes those dry bones live!  Words are mere faded metaphors, pressed like dried flowers in old and musty volumes, until a blow upon our heads, a pang in our hearts, a strain on our nerves, the whisper of a maid, the voice of a little child, turns them into living blossoms of odorous beauty.