they adhered to the dying man, and soothed him, and consoled him, and cheered him, and whispered into his failing ear words of truth, and might, and peace, undismayed by the horrors of the scene around them.

But touching him as a MINISTER, but one conclusion can be drawn-popularity was at once his snare and his ruin.

The injury he inflicted on religion they will admit who hold with the exemplary Skelton, that "A minister by preaching twenty years with the tongue of an angel, shall not edify his hearers so much as he shall corrupt his seers by one material slip in his conduct."

Yet he was truly penitent; and when one reads his "Prison Thoughts" and "Prison Prayers," the frame of mind which they pourtray recalls the profound conclusion of the celebrated Bishop Sherlock :

"The pain and grief of mind which we suffer from having done ill flow from the very constitution of our nature, as we are rational agents. Nor can we conceive a greater argument of God's utter irreconcileableness to sin, than that he has given us such a nature that we can never be reconciled to it ourselves."

CHAPTER IV.

THE PENALTY OF SIN DELAYED BUT CERTAIN.

The Miser Murderer: W. A. Horne.

1057

"It is better to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him. Your victory may deprive him of his power to hurt for the present; but reconciliation disarms him even of his will to injure." CECIL.

In the startling records of crime and punishment there is no more striking feature than the veil of obscurity which the Great Ruler of Events occasionally permits the offender to throw over his crime.

A gross fraud, an incendiary fire, a fatal act of lawless violence is perpetrated. There can be no doubt as to the commission of the offence; none as to the dishonesty, revengeful spirit, or desperate intent of the wrong-doer. But despite of effort and energy—he remains undiscovered. The current of human life and human struggle rolls on. Chance and change, reverses, illness, privation, bereavement, distract

the attention of the bystanders.

Apparently

the offence is forgotten, and the transgressor secure. Years intervene. The criminal lives on undisturbedly. The notion of life-long impunity has obtained full possession of his imagination. A passing ray of seeming prosperity seems to flicker around him. Not only is he unmolested: there are indications, not to be mistaken, of approaching affluence. Who defies detection more daringly than he? “Tush, the Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it."

On a sudden the scene changes. The hour of fancied immunity is past. Extended and abused forbearance terminates. The interval granted for reflection and repentance abruptly closes. The ends of justice must now be satisfied, and an outraged law demands and receives its victim.

A curious case in point occurred many years ago, far beyond the reach of the recollection of the present generation. A criminal for some deed of violence was tried at Chelmsford, found guilty, and condemned. He had an accomplice -the greater villain of the two-who defied the search of the police; appropriated to him

self the lion's share of the plunder, and was apparently secure. To the condemned man this fact seemed torture; many and earnest were his inquiries whether his partner and tutor in iniquity had been discovered, and bitter were his lamentations when told that no clue to his retreat existed. The officers of justice despaired, in fact, of his apprehension; their conviction was, that he had fled the country. After an interval, unusually protracted, the condemned man is brought out for execution. All human interests seem to have ceased: he stands on the verge of eternity. The chaplain has uttered his last prayer and withdrawn; the fatal noose is round his neck; the executioner but awaits the concerted signal. As the strained gaze of the doomed man ranges with painful eagerness over the faces of the assembled throng, features at some distance from the scaffold attract his attention: he looks again, and his first impression deepens into certainty. There stands his accomplice! The long-sought is close at hand; information of the fact is given by him while almost in the grasp of death; the guilty spectator (little expecting, amid such a multitude to be recog

nised), is adroitly surrounded, quietly captured, tried, and executed.

Another case of rather more recent date, but conveying a like moral, deserves mention.

A lady travelling with her husband is stopped and robbed by a highwayman, who, not content with plunder, adds insult and ill-treatment. The gentleman, in the struggle, receives severe injuries which result in loss of sight. Meanwhile, the robber escapes. No clue to his whereabouts exists. His person, as described by the lady, is unknown to the police, and all idea of his apprehension is pronounced absurd and visionary. Many long years elapse. The husband, impoverished and helpless from loss of sight, loses his connection, and falls gradually into poverty. Eventually he becomes the inmate of a prison. There, with affectionate and untiring assiduity, his wife attends to his comforts; waits upon him; brings him his meals, and does all that affection can suggest to make him forget the present, and look forward with hope to the future.

Their keeping-room overlooks the racketground; and, one morning, while in attendance on the helpless sufferer, her ear catches the