“I have nothing for vagrants. Go to work, young man.”
A woman poorly clad in widow's weeds passed at that moment, and, as the beggar fell back from the rich man's path, she dropped a bit of silver in his hand, saying with true womanly compassion,—
“Heaven help you! it is all I have to give.”
“I'll beg no more,” muttered Walter, as he turned away burning with shame and indignation; “I'll take from the rich what the poor so freely give. God pardon me; I see no other way, and they must not starve.”
With a vague sense of guilt already upon him, he stole into a more unfrequented street and slunk into the shadow of a doorway to wait for coming steps and nerve himself for his first evil deed.
Glancing up to chide the moonlight for betraying him, he started; for there, above the snow-clad roofs, rose the cross upon the tower. Hastily he averted his eyes, as if they had rested on the mild, reproachful countenance of a friend.
Far up in the wintry sky the bright symbol shone, and from it seemed to fall a radiance, warmer than the moonlight, clearer than the starlight, showing to that tempted heart the darkness of the yet uncommitted wrong.
That familiar sight recalled the past; he thought of Jamie, and seemed to hear again the childish words, uttered long ago, “God will remember us.”
Steps came and went along the lonely street, but the dark figure in the shadow never stirred, only stood there with bent head, accepting the silent rebuke that shone down upon it, and murmuring, softly,—
“God remember little Jamie, and forgive me that my love for him led me astray.”