“And I shall follow in your footsteps, my friend.  I never thought of the lost time you mention, of the thirty children unblessed by the good act I purposed doing.  Can I leave them to vice, to suffering, to crime, and yet be innocent?  Will not their souls be required at my hands, now that God shows me their condition?  I feel the pressure of a responsibility scarcely thought of an hour ago.  You have turned the current of my thoughts in a new direction.”

“And what is better still,” answered Mr. Erwin, your purposes also.”

“My purposes also,” was the reply.

A week afterwards the friends met again.

“Ah,” said Mr. Erwin, as he took the hand of Mr. Steel, “I see a new light in your face.  Something has taken off from your heart that dead, dull weight of which you complained when I was last here.  I don’t know when I have seen so cheerful an expression on your countenance.”

“Perhaps your eyes were dull before.”  Mr. Steel’s smile was so all-pervading that it lit up every old wrinkle and care-line in his face.

“I was at the school yesterday,” said Mr. Erwin, in a meaning way.

“Were you?” The light lay stronger on the speaker’s countenance.

“Yes.  A little while after you were there.”

Mr. Steel took a deep breath, as if his heart had commenced beating more rapidly.

“I have not seen a happier man than the superintendent for a score of weeks.  If you had invested the ten thousand dollars for his individual benefit, he could not have been half so well pleased.”

“He seems like an excellent man, and one whose heart is in his work,” said Mr. Steel.

“He had, already, taken in ten poor little boys and girls on the strength of your liberal donation.  Ten children lifted out of want and suffering, and placed under Christian guardianship!  Just think of it.  My heart gave a leap for joy when he told me.  It was well done, my friend—­well done!”

“And what of your good purpose, Mr. Erwin?” asked the other.

“Two little girls—­babes almost,” replied Mr. Erwin, in a lower voice, that almost trembled with feeling, “were brought to me.  As I looked at them, the superintendent said:  ’I heard of them two days ago.  Their wretched mother had just died, and, in dying, had given them to a vicious companion.  Hunger, cold, debasement, suffering, crime, were in the way before them; and but for your timely aid, I should have had no power to intervene.  But, you gave the means of rescue, and here they are, innocent as yet, and out of danger from the wolf.’  In all my life, my friend, there has not been given a moment of sincerer pleasure.”

For some time Mr. Steel sat musing.

“This is a new experience,” he said, at length.  “Something outside of the common order of things.  I have made hundreds of investments in my time, but none that paid me down so large an interest.  A poor speculation it seemed.  You almost dragged me into it; but, I see that it will yield unfailing dividends of pleasure.”