True Nobles and Heroes. 37

in the other his intended victim ready, lying
sleeping calmly, unmindful of the dreadful
fate awaiting him, with his Bible on his
breast.

It is true “a guilty conscience does”
indeed “make cowards of us all.” Many
years ago there was a little boy, whose sister
was lying dangerously ill. <A kind neigh-
bour had sent her a bunch of grapes; they
were lying at her bedside. ‘The boy went in
and stole them. When his mother came up
and asked him, “John, have you eaten your
sister’s grapes?” ‘‘ No, mamma,” was the
bold reply. A few days after, his little
darling sister was laid in the cold grave,
and bitterly did he think that he had
deprived her of those grapes. The boy
became a man, and for twenty years he
travelled about the world, till on one
occasion he was shipwrecked off the coast of
America. Clinging to the spars, he expected
that each wave as it came would wash him
away, and prove his winding-sheet. He
says that he heard, as it were, a voice close
to his ear repeating to him the question
asked by his mother some thirty years before,