Tell me, have you, since that period, discovered the members of your ancient household?
Hitherto you have been so occupied in listening to the history of my wrongs that you have scarcely spoken of the changes in your life since we last met.' 'If, Probus, I have been silent to you concerning myself, it is because for me retrospection has little that attracts.

While yet it was in my power to return to those parents whom I deserted in my boyhood, I thought not of repentance; and now that they must be but too surely lost to me, my yearning towards them is of no avail.

Of my brother, from whom I parted in a moment of childish jealousy and anger, and whose pardon and love I would give up even my ambition to acquire, I have never yet discovered a trace.

Atonement to those whom I injured in early life is a privilege denied to the prayers of my age.

From my parents and my brother I departed unblest, and unforgiven by them I feel that I am doomed to die! My life has been careless, useless, godless, passing from rapine and violence to luxury and indolence, and leading me to the marriage which I exulted in when I last saw you, but which I now feel was unworthy alike in its motives and its results.
But blessed and thrice blessed by that last calamity of my wicked existence, for it opened my eyes to the truth--it made a Christian of me while I was yet alive!' 'Is it thus that the Christian can view his afflictions?
I would, then, that I were a Christian like you!' murmured the landholder, in low, earnest tones.
'It was in those first days, Probus,' continued the other, 'when I found myself deserted and dishonoured, left alone to be the guardian of my helpless child, exiled for ever from a home that I had myself forsaken, that I repented me in earnest of my misdeeds, that I sought wisdom from the book of salvation, and the conduct of life from the Fathers of the Church.