UNOPENED PARCELS. 141

had pronounced. “Looking back upon the past
with the self-reproach of a later intelligence,”
continued my father, “my friend took a terrible
estimate of his early transgression; one that
would have satisfied even you, Honor. Let that
suffice. Our interest in the matter is to know
what followed—what effeet was left upon his mind.
Hundreds of well-meaning people in the world, I
know, would tell you that there could be but one
answer to such a question; that he must have
turned out ill. What happened really? A few
more years, better health—continued Christian
training—fitting companionship—turned a puny
baby into a strong boy, sound in body as in mind :
what came then of the one dark corner in his
heart ? Because he had been deceitful once, and
had not even yet the courage to own it, was he
therefore to go on being deceitful more and more ?
_ Was the evil to spread like a leprosy over his
whole nature? Quite otherwise; quite the re-
verse even! If his mother had been asked which,
of all her children, was, during the years of his
intelligent boyhood, the most conscientious, the