times when the strong man would cry aloud over his blighted life, and
the ruin which had fallen upon his youth.

"You're right, Madge," he said sometimes, "you're right, my girl. I
ought to have been something better; I ought to have been, and I might
have been, perhaps, but for one man--but for one base-minded villain,
whose treachery blasted my character, and left me alone in the world to
fight against society. You don't know what it is, Madge, to have to
fight that battle. A man who began life with an honest name, and fair
prospects before him, finds himself cast, by one fatal error, disgraced
and broken, on a pitiless world. Nameless, friendless, characterless, he
has to begin life afresh, with every man's hand against him. He is the
outcast of society. The faces that once looked kindly on him turn away
from him with a frown. The voices that once spoke in his praise are loud
in his disfavour. Driven from every place where once he found a welcome,
the ruined wretch hides himself among strangers, and tries to sink his
hateful identity under a false name. He succeeds, perhaps, for a time,
and is trusted, and being honestly disposed at heart, is honest: but he
cannot long escape from the hateful past. No! In the day and hour when
he is proudest of the new name he has made, and the respect he has won
for himself, some old acquaintance, once a friend, but now an enemy,
falls across his pathway. He is recognized; a cruel voice betrays him.
Every hope that he had cherished is swept away from him. Every good deed
that he has done is denounced as the act of a hypocrite. Because once
sinned he can never do well. _That_ is the world's argument."

"But not the teaching of the gospel," Margaret murmured. "Remember,
father, who it was that said to the guilty woman, Go, and sin no more.'"

"Ay, my girl," James Wentworth answered, bitterly, "but the world would