“You may, perhaps, be a nobler man for having been reared in obscurity; you will, at all events, realize that a noble character is more to be desired than a mere noble-sounding name.”
He was now living out the pure precepts that she had so untiringly taught him during those long, sorrowful years when she was so sadly and uncomplainingly bearing her banishment and disgrace.
Tom Drake dropped his face upon his hands to hide the humility and reverence he could not speak, and the tears he could not stay and was ashamed to show.
Earle Wayne’s enemy was utterly routed at last; he had stormed a citadel by a method of warfare hitherto untried, and it lay in ruins at his feet.
“I—I’m afraid I do not quite understand. You will not have me arrested or tried—I am to be a free man?” Tom Drake breathed, in low, suppressed tones.
“No; if you are sentenced to drag out a weary term of years as a convict, you would become discouraged, and be ready for almost any desperate deed if you should live to return; and, Tom, I have come to believe that you would really like to lead a different life from what your past has been.”
“I would, sir, I would; but I never should have thought of it but for you—but for that bullet. It was indeed, as you said, a ‘blessing in disguise,’” he said, weakly but earnestly.
Earle smiled his rare, luminous smile, then said, gravely:
“Then I will help you all I can; but you must do your share also; it cannot be done in a moment, and you must not get disheartened. It will be something like this wound of yours; sin, like the bullet, has entered deep—the disease lies deep, and only the most rigid and skilful handling, with patient endurance, will work the cure.”
He did not preach him a long sermon on human depravity, original sin, and the wrath of God.