For three years I was supremely happy. Before the first had quite spent its course, the call of a new life touched on Lucy and the great rapture of parentage came to us. It was a little son.

Oh! how I loved that little boy, and how proud I was of him, too! He was a bold and fearless little chap, and people said he was like me. Sometimes when he smiled I caught a look that reminded me of myself, but I always saw his mother in his eyes.

A year later another boy came, and in all the wide world through there could not have been anywhere a family happier than was ours.

Being now quite independent I had resigned my post at Winter and Winter and had taken to the thorny paths of literature. I was not without some gifts in that direction, and began to make headway in the Commonwealth Press.

Life seemed all happiness to us then. The past troubled me no more. I never allowed myself to dwell upon it, and by tacit but unspoken agreement Lucy and I never referred to it at all. She, because the doctors had told her, after my illness, that I had best forget it, and I— because I never wanted to recall the faintest memory of those dreadful days.

Well, time rolled on and we had been married just over three years and a half, when a well-known revivalist preacher came to Victor Harbor and in an evil hour I went to hear him.

I went more out of curiosity than anything else, and at first I was only rather amused. He was not a patch on me as far as oratory was concerned, and the abrupt way in which he generally ended his sentences jarred horribly on my nerves. Some of his ideas too were very crude and narrow and there was too much of that smug certainty about the next world, which so many preachers always affect.

But he was a man of great earnestness and sincerity, and in spite of myself I came under his thrall. His great theme was — repentance. Who had sinned must one day repent, he insisted, or God would surely punish him — punish him either in himself or in them he loved best. No one could escape. However deep and long-forgotten were the sin, God had remembered it, and in His own good time would exact punishment — punishment sure and certain.

I had gone alone to hear him, and I left the chapel that night, very disturbed and most uneasy in my mind. What if my Paradise were after all but the vain Paradise of fools! What if all the happiness that then was mine were but to prepare me more fully for the punishment that was about to fall. How would the punishment come? Might it, indeed, be Lucy or my little sons who would suffer? The very thought affrightened me and I hurried home in fear.

Directly I got home I thought Lucy looked ill. She was much whiter than usual and very quiet. She hardly talked at supper and ate nothing at all. Next morning she was too ill to get up, and I was in a perfect fear of dread.

In a great hurry I fetched the doctor. Lucy had a high temperature and he could say nothing for certain. In two days, however, pneumonia had definitely set in and in a week she was going to die.

Grief unutterable came upon me, and my mind almost gave way. All the reserve that I had built up against the memories of the past broke down, and I frankly recognized all that was now happening as the punishment for my dreadful crimes. Lucy was to be the scapegoat — Lucy and the little sons. Lucy was going to die, and motherless for ever would my children be.

I threw myself upon my knees in an agony of grief and, choking back my tears, burst into prayer.

Never had I prayed so before; never had prayer touched me as it touched me then. I promised my life if Lucy were spared, all that I had. All that was in me, all my life long, should be consecrated and given up to the saving of men’s souls. The pleasures and the happiness of this world should no longer tempt me and I would live only for the conversion and salvation of others.

I almost fainted with the intensity of my emotion and I rose dazed and giddy from my knees, but I rose in faith and hope too.

Lucy would live now and mine alone would be the cross and crown of thorns. I had sown and I should r............