“It would be exactly what I would like.  I can spare you a day easily.  And it is much better to work out an old debt than to be idle.”

“Very well, Gordon.  Come to-morrow and work for me, and I will pass a dollar and a quarter to your account.  I like this.  It shows you are an honest man.  Never fear but what you’ll get along.”

The approving words of the grocer encouraged Gordon very much.  On the next day he went as he had agreed and worked for Mr. Blake.  When he was about leaving the store at night, Blake called to him and said—­

“Here, Gordon; stop a moment.  I want you to put up a pound of this white crushed sugar; and a quarter of young hyson tea.”

Gordon did as he was directed.  Blake took the two packages from the counter, and handing them to Gordon, said—­

“Take them to your wife with my compliments, and tell her that I wish her joy of an honest husband.”

Gordon took the unexpected favor, and without speaking, turned hastily from the grocer and walked away.

    “Behind that frowning Providence
     He hid a smiling face,”

said Mrs. Gordon, with tearful eyes, when her husband presented her the sugar and tea, and repeated what the grocer had said.

“Yes.  It was a blessing sent to us in disguise,” returned Gordon.  “How little do we know of the good or ill that lies in our immediate future!”

“Do not say ill, dear husband—­only seeming ill; if we think right and do right.  When God makes our future, all is good; the ill is of our own procuring.”

“Right, Mary.  I see that truth as clear as if a sunbeam shone upon it.”

“Time, Faith, Energy!” murmured Gordon to himself, as he lay awake that night, thinking of the future.  Before losing himself in sleep, he had made up his mind to go to another creditor for a small amount, and see if he could not make a similar arrangement with him to the one entered into with the grocer.  The man demurred a little, and then said he would take time to think about it.  When Gordon called again, he declined the proposition, and said he had sold his goods for money, not for work.

“But I have no money,” replied Gordon.

“I’ll wait awhile and see,” returned the man, in a way and with a significance that fretted the mind of Gordon.

“He’ll wait until he sees me getting a little ahead, and then pounce down upon me like a hawk upon his prey.”

Over this idea the reformed man worried himself, and went home to his wife unhappy and dispirited.

“I owe at least a hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars,” he said; “and there is no hope of inducing all of those to whom money is due to wait until we can pay them with comfort to ourselves.  I shall be tormented to death, I see that plain enough.”