“Yes, I know what you wish.  Once I swore I would tear the church down, scatter its dust to the winds, leave not a stone to mark the site!  But I will come and hear you preach for the first time since that sunny Sabbath, twenty years dead, when your text was, ’Cast thy bread upon the waters; for thou shalt find it after many days.’  Sodden, and bitter, and worthless from the long tossing in the great deep of sin, it drifts back at last to your feet; and instead of stooping tenderly to gather up the useless fragments, I wonder that you do not spurn the stranded ruin from you.  Yes, I will come.”

“Thank God!  Oh! what a weight you have lifted from my heart!  St. Elmo, my son!”

There was a long, lingering clasp of hands, and the pastor went into his home with tears of joy on his furrowed face, while his smiling lips whispered to his grateful soul: 

“In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand; for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.”

Mr. Murray watched the stooping form until it disappeared, and then went slowly back to the silent burying ground, and sat down on the steps of the church.

Hour after hour passed and still he sat there, almost as motionless as one of the monuments, while his eyes dwelt as if spellbound, on the dark, dull stain where Annie Hammond had rested, in days long, long past; and Remorse, more powerful than Erictho, evoked from the charnel house the sweet girlish features and fairy figure of the early dead.

His pale face was propped on his hand, and there in the silent watches of the moon-lighted midnight, he held communion with God and his own darkened spirit.

“What hast thou wrought for Right and Truth, For God and man, From the golden hours of bright-eyed youth, To life’s mid-span?”

His almost Satanic pride was laid low as the dead in their mouldering shrouds, and all the giant strength of his perverted nature was gathered up and hurled in a new direction.  The Dead Sea Past moaned and swelled, and bitter waves surged and broke over his heart, but he silently buffeted them; and the moon rode in mid-heaven when he rose, went around the church, and knelt and prayed, with his forehead pressed to the marble that covered Murray Hammond’s last resting-place.

“Oh! that the mist which veileth my To Come Would so dissolve and yield unto mine eyes A worthy path!  I’d count not wearisome Long toil nor enterprise, But strain to reach it; ay, with wrestlings stout Is there such a path already made to fit The measure of my foot?  It shall atone For much, if I at length may light on it And know it for mine own.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

“On! how grand and beautiful it is!  Whenever I look at it, I feel exactly as I did on Easter-Sunday when I went to the cathedral to hear the music.  It is a solemn feeling”, as if I were in a holy place.  Miss Earl, what makes me feel so?”