She wakens in tears, with a strange feeling of contrition that she has seldom or never felt before agitating her bosom, to see the Sunlight looking down with pitying glance upon her—to see the good spirit whose mission it is to make glad and bright the earth, deigning to creep through those prison-bars to speak a word of counsel and hope to her. Thoughts of her husband, on whose honest name she has cast such dishonor, and of her deserted, innocent child, come to her full of most sorrowful reproach. A longing for the restoration of her lost virtue—a conviction of the peacefulness and happiness and exceeding reward attending goodness, ever make her unsealed tears flow more freely. Beside that narrow bed, on the stone floor of her cell, she kneels down in her sorrow and contrition, and on her knees she breathes forth such a prayer as never before went from her heart. And the dear Sunlight is witness of that prayer! She looks upon the kneeling penitent with joy—and from that now hallowed place she does not steal forth hastily, leaving the cell dreary and comfortless as before; she is there when the woman rises from her supplication, as though to assure of the smile of Heavenly forgiveness, which may yet await her. She remains to give encouragement to the hope that the corroding stains now resting on her soul may be ere long effectually wiped away—that reconcilement and love and peace, are yet for her on earth.
Near this woman’s cell there is another where a youth, unjustly accused, singularly blameless and innocent in his life, is singing a morning hymn of praise and adoration. Hemmed in as he is by the prison-wall, deprived of that freedom which is the good man’s _best_ possession, confined with guilty men, and bearing himself the heavy imputation of crime, yet is he supported by the comforting knowledge of his innocence, and by the assurance that the eye which is strong to pierce the secrets of the heart, knows his innocence. The dreariness of his confinement does not fill his soul with terror; his faith is strong in the power and goodness of his Maker, and so it is with patience he performs the labor apportioned him, looking confidently for the hour of his release, and the honorable conviction of his uprightness in the minds of all honest men.