"Harry," he said gently, "do you know, I half hope that I have not heard the best yet of this wonderful story; that there has been another 'making over.' How is it, my boy?"
A bright flush mantled Harry's face as he bent his eyes closer over the paper on which he was scribbling his own and his uncle's names with all sorts of flourishes.
Suddenly he raised his head, and looked full into the kind eyes bent wistfully on him, and smiled:
"I don't know why I should hesitate to tell you that, I am sure," he said, speaking in a firm, manly tone. "It is true enough. I have been made over, I believe. Certainly nobody ever needed it more, and nobody ever struggled harder against it, as you very well know. At least, you know part; but I have been lower down than you think, uncle Harold. Talk about angels! I know that I don't see how any angel can ever do more for me than Miss Benedict has done! I've engaged for life as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I owe more to Miss Benedict, this minute, than I do to any human being, not excepting even you and my mother."
The uncle was out of his chair by this time, one hand on the shoulder of his dear boy, while he held out the other, which was promptly grasped; but he could not speak yet, and he could not see for the tears. This young fellow was very dear to him, and the waiting had been long.
"God bless you!" he said at last, his lips quivering, and unable to utter another word.
"My dear boy, have you told your mother?"
"Not yet," said Harry, his eyes shining, "but you can be sure that I am going to. You see, Uncle Harold, the articles of surrender were only signed, sealed and delivered, night before last in the middle of the night. Since then I have not had a moment's time that belonged to me; but I'll write her such a letter as she has never had from me."
While the uncle walked the parlor of the boarding-house, and waited for his nephew to make ready for evening service, he had some questions to settle which were personal. He became aware of the fact that he had certainly jumped to conclusions regarding some of the workers in the Master's vineyard which were apparently without foundation. Here was this Miss Benedict. He had heard her name mentioned frequently in the days gone by, and always as one of the dependences of the church to which she belonged; and yet he had always thought of her with curling lip. "Workers!" he had told himself, being mentally very sarcastic, "yes, didn't all the initiated know what that meant when applied to a fashionable young lady who lived in an elegant home and mingled with the fashionable world? It meant that she helped at the fancy fairs, and festivals, and bazaars, and what not? Worked them up, probably, with all their accompanying train of evils. It meant that she was a district visitor, perhaps, and left a tract on 'Redeeming the Time' in a home where they were starving for lack of employment, and needed a loaf of bread." He had seen workers of that sort, and he found it difficult to feel for them anything but contempt. The thing for which he was now to take himself to task was the fact that he had classed Claire Benedict among these, knowing nothing of her, meantime, save that she was a member of a fashionable up-town church; and that, too, after knowing her father, and singling him out as a man among thousands. The simple truth was, that he had imagined a character of which he disapproved, and named it Claire Benedict, and then let himself disapprove of her heartily.