I had no inclination to withhold the forgiveness so humbly sought.  I shook hands warmly, with both the boys, saying, “I forgive you with all my heart, let us be friends.  I am proved innocent, and am too happy to cherish anger towards any one.”  When order was again restored Mr. Oswald made some instructive and useful remarks upon the folly and sin of harboring a feeling of envy and ill-will toward others.  “I advise you,” said he, “when you detect a feeling of envy and malice rising in your heart, to remember the sin and wrong, to which the indulgence of this feeling led these two boys, and pray to your Heavenly Father to preserve you from a bitter and envious spirit.  We will talk no more of the unhappy affair at present; it is my wish that each one of you treat Reuben and Thomas the same in every respect as though this circumstance had never taken place.  I intend retaining them still as my pupils, and they must be treated as such by you all.  I trust this lesson will not be lost upon any, for it speaks loudly of the necessity of guarding our own hearts from evil, and it also teaches us how to exercise a spirit of forbearance and forgiveness, and now we must proceed to the work of the day.”

It is, somewhat singular that evil designs against one, either old or young, often, instead of working harm, prove the means of their advancement and promotion.  It was so in this case.  I did not forgive these two boys without a struggle with my own temper and pride, but I did do it, and it came from my heart, and this forgiveness accorded by me, as well as the thought of what I had suffered, caused me to stand higher than ever in the good opinion of my teachers, and the kindness extended to me on all sides more than repaid my past suffering, when moving under a cloud of suspicion and disgrace.  Had I allowed a feeling of revenge to find a place in my heart it might have been gratified by the mortification of Reuben and Thomas, but I tried to rise superior to this feeling, and endeavoured, by repeated acts of kindness, to convince them that my forgiveness was genuine.  When I returned home that day at noon Grandma Adams said she knew by the joyous bound with which I entered the house I was the bearer of good news; and when I had told my story, they were all happy to know that the dark shadow which had rested over me was lifted, and my sky was again bright.  Grandma listened attentively while I told of the guilty ones being detected, and my own innocence made clear as the light of day.  When I had finished she called me to her side and said, “I hope, my boy, you remember the verses I repeated to you the other evening from the thirty-seventh Psalm.  That whole Psalm has been a favourite one with me all my life-long; when weighed down by trouble and anxiety during my long and eventful life, I have often derived consolation and encouragement from that beautiful portion of the Bible; and I have often thought if there is one portion of that Book more blessed and cheering than another