Family Pride

Just at nightfall he startled Bell by asking that Dr. Grant be sent for.

"Please leave me alone with him," he said, when Dr. Morris came; then turning to Morris, as the door closed upon his father and his sister, he said, abruptly: "Pray for me, if you can pray for one who yesterday hated you so for saying he must die."

Earnestly, fervently, Morris prayed, as for a dear brother, and when he finished Wilford's faint "amen" sounded through the room.

"I am not right yet," the pale lips whispered, as Morris sat down beside him. "Not right with God, I mean. I've sometimes said there was no God, but I did not believe it, and now I know there is. He has been moving upon me all the day, driving out my bitterness toward you, and causing me to send for you at last. Do you think there is hope for me? I have much to be forgiven."

"Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow," Morris replied; and then, oh, how earnestly he tried to point that erring man to the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, convincing him that there was hope even for him, and leaving him with the conviction that God would surely finish the good work begun, nor suffer this soul to be lost which had turned to Him even at the eleventh hour.

Wilford knew his days were numbered, and he talked freely of it to his father and sister the next morning when they came to him. He did not say that he was ready or willing to die, only that he must, and he asked them to forget, when he was gone, all that had ever been amiss in him as a son and brother.

"I was too proud, too selfish, to make others happy," he said. "I thought it all over yesterday, and the past came back again so vividly, especially the part connected with Katy. Oh, Katy, I did abuse her!" and a bitter sob attested the genuineness of Wilford's grief for his treatment of Katy. "I thought because I took her from a lower walk of life than mine, that she was bound by every tie of gratitude to do just what I said, and I set myself at work to crush her every feeling and impulse which savored of her early home. I despised her family, I treated them with contempt. I broke Katy's heart, and now I must die without telling her I am sorry. But you'll tell her, father, and you, too, Bell, how, dying, I tried to pray, but could not for thought of my sin to her. She will not be glad that I am dead. I know her better than to think that; and I believe she loves me. But, after I am gone, and the duties of the world have closed up the gap I shall leave, I see a brighter future for her than her past has been; and you may tell her I am--" He could not then say "I am willing."