start up between us until such little service as I could render you, Mr.
Morley, was pretty well over. It would have been a pity if you had been
compelled to drop all communication with a man of attainted character,
before you had learned how to manage the powers that will enable you
hereafter to exhort sinners worse than I have been. Hush, sir! you feel
that, at least now, I am an inoffensive old man, labouring for a humble
livelihood. You will not repeat here what you may have heard, or yet
hear, to the discredit of my former life. You will not send me and my
grandchild forth from our obscure refuge to confront a world with which
we have no strength to cope. And, believing this, it only remains for me
to say, Fare-you-well, sir."

"I should deserve to lose spe-spe-speech altogether," cried the Oxonian,
gasping and stammering fearfully as he caught Waife firmly by the arm,
"if I suffered--suff-suff-suff--"

"One, two! take time, sir!" said the Comedian, softly. And with a sweet
patience he reseated himself on the bank. The Oxonian threw himself at
length by the outcast's side; and, with the noble tenderness of a nature
as chivalrously Christian as Heaven ever gave to priest, he rested his
folded hands upon Waife's shoulder, and looking him full and close in the
face, said thus, slowly, deliberately, not a stammer, "You do not guess
what you have done for me; you have secured to me a home and a career;
the wife of whom I must otherwise have despaired; the Divine Vocation on
which all my earthly hopes were set, and which I was on the eve of
renouncing: do not think these are obligations which can be lightly
shaken off. If there are circumstances which forbid me to disabuse
others of impressions which wrong you, imagine not that their false
notions will affect my own gratitude,--my own respect for you!"