“Tell her,” said Jack, as “Cobbler” Horn wished him good night, “that I dare not ask pardon of God, till I have her forgiveness from her own lips.”
In a village almost English in its rural loveliness “Cobbler” Horn found himself, the next morning, face to face, in the little front-room of a humble cottage, with a pale, sorrowful maiden, on whose pensively-beautiful face hope and fear mingled their lights and shadows while he delivered his tender message.
“Would she go with him?”
“Go?” she exclaimed, with trembling eagerness, “of course I will! But how good it is of you, sir—a stranger, to come like this!”
So Bertha Norman came back with “Cobbler” Horn to the private hospital in New York. He put her into her cousin’s room, closed the door, and then quietly came downstairs. Bertha did not notice that her conductor had withdrawn. She flew to the bedside. The dying man put out a trembling hand.
“Forgive——” he began in broken tones.
But she stifled his words with gentle kisses, and, sitting down by the bed, clasped his poor thin hand.
“Ask God to forgive you, dear Jack. I’ve never stopped loving you a bit!”
“Yes, I will ask God that,” he said. “I can now. But I want to tell you something first, Bertha. I am a rich man.”
Then he told her the wonderful story.