He knew that his sentence, if tried and found guilty, would be a very severe one, and his own sad experience naturally made him incline to the side of mercy.
“But, Tom, whatever you may have been in the past, I do not consider that you are my enemy now,” he said, kindly, when he had concluded his excited speech.
“But I am, sir. I have done you the worst wrong a man can do another—I’ve wronged you in every way—I’m a wretch, and whatever they do with me, it’ll serve me right, and I’ll never open my lips,” he said, excitedly.
“Yes, you have wronged me, and I have suffered in your stead the worst disgrace that a man can suffer. But that is all past now; my innocence has been established, and no shadow of sin rests on my name—John Loker’s confession accomplished that.”
“But, sir, it could not give you back those three years of your life that—that you lost; you——”
“No,” Earle interrupted; “but those three years, long and weary as they were, were not ‘lost’ by any means, Tom. They taught me a lesson of patience and trust which, perhaps, I never should have learned in any other way. It was a hard trial—a bitter trial!” Earle exclaimed, with a shudder, as something of the horror came back to him; “but”—in a reverent tone—“I know that nothing which God sends upon us, if it is rightly borne, can end in harm; nothing but our own sins can do that.”
“Did you feel that way then?” Tom asked, regarding the young marquis with wonder.
“Not at first, perhaps, but it came to me after a little; for, Tom, I had a good Christian mother.”
“Ay, and so had I,” he replied, with a sigh that ended in what sounded very like a sob. But Tom was not strong, you know, and consequently more easily moved.
“She used to teach me that suffering was often blessing in disguise.”