“At last a letter reached me from my employers, requiring my presence at business. My money had long gone, my creditors pressed me on every hand, my friends one and all mocked at my destitution. I returned to —, hiding before my employers the traces of my madness, and letting them wonder how grief had changed me. My home I could not go near—the sight of it and of the children would have driven me utterly mad. I lived in the town. For a week or so I tried hard to keep up appearances—but the evil spirit was on me, and I could not withstand him. I had not then learnt to look to a Greater for strength. I must fly once more from one misery to another tenfold worse.
“But I had no money. My savings were exhausted. My salary was not due. I dared not beg it in advance. I was manager of the bank, and had control over all that was in it. The devil within me tempted me, and I yielded. I falsified the accounts, and tampered with the books of the bank. My very desperation made me ingenious, and it was not till I had been away a month with my ill-gotten booty that the frauds were discovered.”
Again he stopped, and I waited with strangely perturbed feelings till he resumed.
“At first I tried to hide myself, and spent some weeks abroad. But though I escaped justice, my misery followed me. During those weeks, I, who till then had been upright and honest, knew not a moment’s peace. At night I never slept an hour together, by day I trembled at every face I met. The new torture was worse than the old, and at last in sheer despair I returned to London and courted detection. It seemed as if they would never find me. The less I hid myself, the more secure I seemed. At last, however, they found me—it was a relief when they did.
“I acknowledged all, and was sentenced to penal servitude for fourteen years.”
“What!” I exclaimed, springing from my seat. “You are—”
“Hush!” said Mr Smith, pointing up to the ceiling, “you’ll wake him. Yes, I am, or I was, a convict. Listen to the little more I have to say.”
I restrained myself with a mighty effort and resumed my seat.
“I was transported, and for ten years lived the life of a convicted felon. It was a rough school, my boy, but in it I learned lessons an eternity of happiness might never have taught me. Christ is very pitiful. They brought me out of madness into sense, and out of storm into calm. As I sat at night in my cell I could bear once more to think of the little ivy-covered cottage, of the green grave in the churchyard, and of the two helpless children who might still live to call me father. What had become of them? They were perhaps growing up into boyhood and girlhood, beginning to discover for themselves the snares and sorrows of the world which had overcome me. Need I tell you I prayed for those two night and day? A convict’s prayer it was—a forger’s prayer, a thief’s prayer; but a father’s prayer to a pitiful Father for his children.
“After ten years I received a ‘ticket-of-leave,’ and was free to return home. But I could not do it yet. I preferred to remain where I was, in Australia, till the full term of my disgrace was ended, and I was at liberty as a free and unfettered man to show my face once more in England. It is not two years since I returned. No one knew me. Even in — my name had been forgotten. The ivy-covered cottage belonged to a stranger, and no one could tell me what had become of the forger’s children who once lived there. It was part of my punishment, and it may be my long waiting is not yet over.”