“When the chaplain tried to talk to me, and gave me a book to read, I dashed it back in his face, and insulted him.  One Saturday they sent me to sweep out and dust the chapel, and when I finished, I laid down on one of the benches to rest.  You went in to practise, not knowing I was there; and began to sing.  As I listened, something seemed to stir and wake up in my heart, and somehow the music shook me out of myself.  There was one hymn, so solemn, so thrilling, and the end of every verse was, ’Oh, Lamb of God!  I come!’—­and you sang it with a great cry, as if you were running to meet some one.  I had not wept—­for oh!  I don’t know how long—­not since—.  Then you played on the organ some variations on a tune—­’The Sweet By-and-by’—­and the tears started, and I seemed but a leaf in a wild storm.  That was the song my little boy used to sing!  There was a Sunday-school in the basement of a church next to our house, and he would stand at the window, and listen till he caught the tune, and learned the words.  Oh, that hymn!  Every note stung me like a whip lash when I heard it again.  My child’s face as I saw him the last time I put him to bed; when he opened his drowsy eyes, and raised up to kiss me good-night, came back to me, and seemed to sing, ’In the sweet by-and-by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.’  No—­never—­never!  Oh, my boy!  My beautiful angel Max—­there is no room for me, on that heavenly shore!  Oh! my darling—­there is no ‘Sweet by-and-by’ for mother now.”

She had started up, with arms clasped around her knees, and her convulsed face lifted toward the low ceiling of the cell, writhed, as she drew her breath in hissing gasps.

“You loved your little boy?”

“You are not a mother, or you wouldn’t ask me that If ever you had felt your baby’s sweet warm lips on yours, you would know that it is mother-love that makes tigers of women.  Because I idolized my little one, I could not bear the cruel wrong of having him torn from me, taught to despise me; and so I loved him best when I slew him, and I was so mad, with the delirium of pain and rage and despair, that I forgot I was putting the gulf of perdition between us.  Rather than submit to separation in this world, than have him raised by them, to turn away from his mother as a thing too vile to wear his father’s name, I lost him for ever and ever!  My son, my star-eyed darling.”

“Listen to me.  You loved him so tenderly, that no matter how wilful or disobedient he might have been, you forgave him every offence; and when he sobbed on your bosom, you felt he was doubly dear, and hugged him closer to your heart?  Even stronger and deeper is God’s love for us.  Dare you call yourself more pitiful, more tender than your Father in heaven, who gave you the capacity to love your child, because He so compassionately loves His children?  We sin, we go far astray, we think mercy is exhausted, and the door shut against us;