That scene in the hospital with Victor laid its mark on Victoria as long as she lived. It was a blessing for her that Richard and Rachel had come into her thought of her future. These two tenderly came to her in this present trouble and she realized as the days went on that love and friendship are mighty boons to the distressed. For Victor did not recover. It was true that the surgeon had spoken the right word, the beautiful voice was gone forever. It was not until sometime had gone by that Victoria learned all the details of Victor's career and his final return to Chicago and appearance in the hospital. These came to her from various sources as days went on.

Victor had fallen again soon after securing his position with the London company. After leaving Victoria he had fully determined to reform and make the most of his vocal gift. For a short time he worked hard and lived the life of strictest morality. During that time he was all the rage in London. His great natural gift was supplemented for a little while by the kind of personal righteousness which makes such a gift a most tremendous carrying power with the people. But one day at a Club restaurant he fell in with one of his New York acquaintances. He was persuaded to take up the cards again. Just a friendly game. He hesitated, yielded, and fell. His course from that day was very rapidly downward. He gambled nightly. Lost heavily. Forged a note of a nobleman who was a semi-professional gambler and fled to the continent. He did not dare hire himself to sing for fear of discovery. He lived no one knew how. Only every day saw him sinking lower in vice and dissipation. An opportunity to sail for America came to him just when he was in danger of being arrested for his London crime. Once in New York he found himself penniless and completely adrift. It was then that he thought of going to Chicago to borrow money or get it in some way from Victoria. So low as this had he sunk. He managed to secure his transportation to Chicago. The very day he entered the city an accident had happened to him in one of the streets. He could never tell what it was in detail. The shock of some collision either with a car or a cab had so affected him that in a half dazed condition he had wandered about the city nearly all night. Once he realized that he had fallen down and was lying in a pool of water near a hydrant. How long he had been there he did not know. Then his limbs grew numb and cold. He lost all sense of his surroundings and when he came to himself he was in the hospital where Victoria discovered him. But it was true that paralysis of the upper part of his body and of the vocal cords had in a moment of time thrown him a helpless wreck upon the care of the world. He could never sing again and he would never move about again. He was more helpless than a baby.

Victoria took him home. There was nothing the hospital could do for him that she could not do. Victor showed no feeling but rage and madness at his condition. Victoria shuddered to think that if he had the power of speech he would probably use it to curse the day he was born. As time went on his feelings towards his condition did not appear to change. There was possibly a little softening in his manner when Victoria played for him as she always did at the close of the day no matter how tired she might be or what her professional duties had been. Aside from that, he lay there in his room on the chair specially made for him, with a hard heart and a rebellion against his fate that made the burden of his death in life a terrible thing for his sister to bear. Only her Christian faith came to her at this time to support her in the greatest trial of her life. With it was the love of Richard who now claimed the right to share all her burdens. "We will care for him together. It will be a part of my life with yours," he had said at once as soon as Victoria moved Victor to her house. Victoria had smiled up to Richard through her tears and the future was already bright with peace and hope because there was some one to help lift this sorrow.

The year had come to its close and the Question Class met for its last meeting at John King's. It was the regular Monday night and happened to be the 31st of December. Many of the questions were appropriate to the thoughts of the old year. John King said he would save those for the last and answer a few miscellaneous questions first.

Question. "If you had offended a person not meaning to do so would you apologize to him for having offended him?"

"Yes. Why not. If I offended some one not meaning to, he may not know that I did not intend it. He may think I did it purposely. If I go to him frankly and tell him it was unintentional it may change his feeling towards me and prevent a disagreeable and unnecessary misunderstanding between us. Some people think they must stand upon their rights and never yield an inch unless they are in the wrong. But is a case of unintentional offense to a person there is nothing to be gained by a proud refusal to say anything to the offended person. It is true there are always some people who are continually imagining slights and insults. They feel so important that they think other people are thinking of them all the time. It would be foolish to be continually running to these people and asking their pardon for having offended them. The best way sometimes is to let them alone and say nothing. But in the case of a misunderstanding where one has become offended through a misjudgement of your action it wouldn't hurt you and may do much good to apologize. We must remember this. There is no shame or remorse or repentance in such an apology. If you don't mean to offend a person who is offended all you have to apologize for may be possibly a little carelessness or ignorance or haste or something of that sort. Of course if you have once explained matters and the offended person still feels offended in spite of your apology you have done all you can. But you will not miss anything to do that. You will be the better for it." Question. "What is a remedy for a person who does not keep the Y. P. S. C. E. pledge?"

"Do you mean the remedy for some one else to apply to the person or the remedy for the person to apply to himself? There is no remedy for a person who breaks his word except being born again. But this question is honestly asked no doubt and ought to be seriously answered. There are a good many young people who take the pledge in the Endeavor Society without realizing what it means. Just as there are a good many people who join the church and never think of their promises to support the church services or do their share of its work. What is the remedy? More personal Christianity. More understanding of the meaning of consecration and devotion to the cause of the Kingdom of God. This is not a remedy that can be prescribed and given to the patient like a patent medicine. But a member of the Y. P. S. C. E. who regularly fails to keep the pledge is in need of more honesty with himself if he wants to continue as a faithful member of the Endeavor or that particular society. If the person is a member and wants to be a member of the Endeavor it is far more harmful to him to take the Society Pledge and then not keep it than it is never to join the society at all. It is always a harm to character to say you will do a thing, to make a promise and then fail to do it."

Question. "Is it desirable for a young man to spend so much time in muscular development or athletic sports?"

"Not if the result is the making of muscle in a professional manner. Professional athletes are obliged to keep at it all their lives if they wish to live. Some of the most noted athletes have died of consumption or heart disease within a short time after they have ceased to keep up their professional training and the average duration of the professional athlete's life is fat below that of the average healthy citizen. What is needed by the average man for business, law, medicine, that ministry, or teaching, is not abnormal biceps or abnormal lungs and heart but food sound organs all working harmoniously and well balanced. The longest lived people in the world are ministers and as a rule they are not noted for excessive muscular development. As a rule they live temperate, wholesome, moral lives, do not train any part of the body to excess and are cheerful and contented in spite of small salaries and large drains on vital energy. The best physical training does not have for its object the making of professional athletes but sound, wholesome, well-proportioned bodies fitted to stand the wear and tear of the ordinary average daily life."

Question. "Would you advise a young man to marry before he has made his fortune?"

"It depends on the girl he marries. Yes, in most cases I should say a young man need not wait until he has made his fortune. He ought to be able to support his wife before he marries. That is, he ought to be able to provide a home. That home may be very humble but it may be very happy. If the young wife is the right sort or a helpmeet she will wish to assist in making the home happier and more comfortable and useful as her husband's business prospers and grows. If I were a young woman I should hesitate to marry a young man who had waited until he had made his fortune before he asked me to be his wife. I should feel as if he thought his fortune was worth more than himself. Thousands of the happiest, best marriages ever known have been those where the young husband and wife have shared together from the start the responsibilities and toils and pleasures of home making."

Question. "Ought every girl to know how to keep house?"

"Of course. Even the Queen of Holland it is said can prepare a meal and serve it better than any of the servants in the palace. It does not make any difference how much money a woman may have or how many servants she can hire, not to know how to keep house herself may determine her happiness as home keeper."

Question. "How soon do you call a person old?"

"Most anywhere between one and one hundred. Some people are old at twenty-five. Some are young at seventy-five. Some never grow old at all. Years do not make people grow old. It is the heart, the feelings, the within, not the without. Old age is a purely relative term. I used to think thirty was a mark of growing old. But arter reaching and passing that mark I am inclined to put it ar fifty or sixty, but I don't want anyone to call me old even then."

Question. "What advantage is there in thinking over the past?"

"Not any unless the result is to make the future better. The past is full of lessons. If we learn them we shall be better for it. Nations and individuals can learn very much from the history of past experiments, trials, mistakes or ventures. He is the wise man who profits by his experience. The fool is the one who never learns from experience. It is good to go back over a year's history and note where we have failed and been wrong and made blunders and then, not dwelling unnecessarily over what is gone, use the heritage of it all to go on in a stronger, wiser way. The greatest value of the past lies in its directing power for the present and future. Every year sets up its guide posts of warning or direction. To fall into the same pit again or to get lost in the same woods a second time when the past year has plainly marked the safe and right way, is to stumble through life blind and foolish never profiting by that truest of all teachers, Experience."

Question. "Do you think it does any good to make New Year's Resolutions?"

Yes, if you keep them. It is good to make good resolutions every day and keep them. A good many people make New Year's Resolutions like church conventions or conferences before election and then break them all to pieces when it come to voting. All the to-days ought to be better than the yesterdays; all the to-morrows better than the to-days. Why make so many good resolves on New Year's Day. Why not make them all the year every morning? New Year's resolutions are too much like Sunday religion. They won't stand the wear and tear of the market place and the counting room and the rush of the world's traffic."

Question. "What is the hope of the world for the New Year?"

"The hope of the world for the New Year is the New Life as lived and taught by Jesus Christ. The hope of the world is in the possibilities of Regeneration of Humanity. The greatest need of our nation, of our country, of all nations, of all countries, is a need of being born again. The most hopeful truth ever taught by Christ was the truth of regenerated manhood and womanhood. In a little while, two or three hours, we shall as we mark the sweep of earthly time step over the threshold into a new year. It will mean a great deal to us if we put off the old man at that time. It will mean everything. A new humanity is the only hope of a better world. And a new humanity cannot come to the world except it come through the Christ of God. He is the Hope of the world. He is the Way and the Truth and the Life."

John King paused a moment as he reached the end of the questions and looked thoughtfully and lovingly around the room. Then the sight of his familiar company touched him deeply: There were Tom and Rachel, Richard and Victoria, Miss Fergus and many others, some of them careless, indifferent, thoughtless, and others noble, prayerful, Christian in heart and purpose, all of then with youth and hope and joy in life. John King's heart went out to them.

"It may be," he said gently after a pause, "that I may not be with you through this new year. Changes will come to all or many of you. We have asked a great many questions this year. No one knows better than myself how incomplete have been the answers. But I hope there is one question we may all ask and answer before we meet again. It is this,

"Am I in possession of that eternal life which is the new life of the soul? That is the question. And I cannot answer that for you. You must each one answer that for yourself. May God grant you answer it right, and before we say to one another ‘I wish you a Happy New Year.'"

The next day Richard was sitting in the room which Tom and he had used now for sometime as a common work shop. He was finishing a new story. It had cost him the hardest work of his life. For three years he had toiled over it and this New Year's day he had the satisfaction of putting the final touches to the manuscript. It lay in a good sized pile before him and he leaned back in his chair and looked at it thoughtfully. His mind went back to his first attempt and his struggles to get a publisher. The same ideal in writing still possessed him. But he had now an added enthusiasm in his love for Victoria. "I wonder what she will think of it?" he kept saying to himself. He had not told her yet. He wished to make her a little surprise. So Richard was a very happy person that morning as he finally rose and after his old habit began to walk up and down the room talking to himself. Tom had gone out early on some business and the two were planning to go and see King a little while in the evening. He had invited them to a little company, he said. It was very select and he wanted Richard and Tom to wear their best clothes and be as entertaining and handsome as possible. The boys were accustomed to King's humor, but they knew from the way he spoke that they would meet some specially interesting people.

Suddenly the door burst open and Tom entered. He walked right up to his old chum and said --

"Dick, will you be best man at a wedding pretty soon?"

"What!" cried Richard holding Tom off at arm's length. Then he answered with an imitation of Tom's manner, "Well I will if I'm not otherwise engaged!" Then in his own manner;

"Tom, is it congratulations? Shall I wish you and Rachel a Happy New Year?"

Yes, only you must say Rachel and you. Always mention the most important first. Dick, I don't know just how I brought it around but Rachel told me this morning that she was willing, seeing it was me, to change her name from Brooks to Howard. I must have acted like a fool or an idiot but Rachel seemed to understand what I wanted. She's the brightest girl I ever saw."

"Tom, I believe if the truth were know Rachel had to do the proposing!"

"It's false!" shouted Tom. "I was as bold as a man walking up to a Krupp gun loaded with dynamite." Tom was bursting with excitement and Richard never saw him so wonderfully happy. He pulled out of his overcoat pockets a lot of toys and laid them on the table. Richard laughed until he cried at the sight. Tom coming home from his interview with Rachel had not been able to contain himself. Running across a peddler of comic toys he had bought two pockets full. There was a tin monkey that would climb up a string if another string was pulled. There was a mouse made of brass that ran around on the floor in a very lifelike way. And a small cat that when wound up chased a mouse by clock work. There was a snake made of joints of wood and rubber that turned around the leg of a chair in a very serpentine fashion, and a great tin spider that crawled backward and forward over the table. Tom set then all going and laughed and laughed with Richard until his curious excitement was worked off. Then suddenly he swept the toys up into a corner of the room, threw the cushion of a chair over them and said--

"Dick, you must think I am crazy. But I never proposed to a girl before and this has upset me. But Dick, Dick, I am the happiest man in the city."

"I claim that distinction," replied Richard.

"Oh, well, yours is an old claim. No, you can't be as happy as I am. Miss Stanwood is a genius and you are a genius. Now geniuses can't love each other as much as common people like me and Rachel."

"You mean Rachel and me."

"Of course. And I didn't mean to call her a common person either. Why Dick, she --"

"Yes, everything will be ‘she' now," replied Richard laughing.

Tom sobered down at once. All the excitement and the fun vanished. He sat down and after a while said,

"Dick, if I did blunder in the asking I know enough to know that the greatest blessing that ever came into my life has come now. I thank God he has so filled my life with his happiness. And in His sight I mean to be worthy of it."

"God has been very good to us both, old fellow." Richard threw his arm over Tom's shoulder as they ast near together and if there was a hint of moisture in the eyes of these two grown up young men no one saw it except the eye of the tin spider which peeped out from under one corner of the cushion.

On the way to John King's that evening Tom said,

"Dick, we ought to tell John King the news and engage him in advance. He's awfully busy in June."

"June! You don't mean to say Rachel will marry you this year?"

"She will if I ask her," said Tom boldly. "I never believed in long engagements."

Richard laughed and when the two reached the minister's house he insisted that Tom should break the news seeing he had mentioned it.

They were early and the other guests had not arrived. John King was alone. His sister was superintending some work in the other room.

"Come before the fire," he said after hats and overcoats had been removed.

They sat down and John King at once said, "An open fire is the most home like thing I know."

Richard nudged Tom as an indication that this was a good opening for the news of his engagement. Tom shuffled nervously in his chair and then said, to Richard's discomfiture,

"Have you heard the news, Mr. King, of Miss Stanwood's engagement?"

"No," said King turning around quickly. "To what company? Is she going to leave Chicago?"

"Company!" ejaculated Tom. "Oh, I see. Why to the Richard Bruce company, Limited."

King sat up and looked over at Richard with an impulsive look of very great delight.

"Bruce, is that a fact?"

"Yes, sir, very much so."

"Then I congratulate you on having won the most lovely young woman in all Chicago."

"I don't know about that," put in Tom. "I won't fight over it though."

King looked over at Tom with another gleam of light in his great dark eyes.

"Well, well, to think of you two fellows going off together in this way. Oh, you needn't tell me, Tom. I don't need to be knocked down to take a hint. Only I don't believe the pretty Miss Rachel said yes so very long ago or I should have known it before this."

"She proposed to Tom this morning, Mr. King," said Richard, "and Tom couldn't help himself."

"Didn't want to either," replied Tom.

"Boys," said King rising and standing before the fire. "I am not used to talking without manuscript and this news takes me unprepared. I don't know just what to say."

"You might propose three cheers and a tiger," suggested Tom.

Just then the bell rang and King said, "Give me time to think it over. Meanwhile, dear fellows, you have my heartiest congratulations. The other guests have arrived. I think you know them."

Richard and Tom rose as the figures came into the fire lit room. They had been looking so hard at the fire that they could not see very distinctly. Then John King said with great formality, Miss Stanwood, Mr. Bruce. Miss Brooks, Mr. Howard. I believe you have met before." For a minute they all stood there solemnly and then Tom said, "Happy to make your acquaintance, Miss Brooks." Something in his tone was so irresistibly funny that Victoria's pure sweet laughter was instantly caught up by all of them and just then John King's sister announced dinner.

"Come," said King with his most delightful heartiness, "come, Victoria. I am old enough to say so, Miss Stanwood, to-night. Victoria and Richard, you may sit here, and Rachel and Tom, you may sit here."

After grace had been asked King looked at the very happy faces and said, "It looks as if I had planned this meeting, but honest now I didn't. I had invited three or four other members of our Institutional Class but at the last moment they sent word they could not come."

"Do you feel very sorry, sir?" asked Tom.

"I'll try to be reconciled to their absence, Tom."

"So will we," said Tom with a look at Rachel.

"The old, old story," murmured John King as he sat there delighted with this company of happy lovers. "Heaven grant they may have many Happy New Years in the love of their true hearts and the service of God."

What is the end of our story is really the beginning of the story of our characters. Victoria and Rachel were married at Victoria's house in June, as Tom had suggested. It was a quiet wedding occasion and of course John King was the minister. Tom and Rachel began housekeeping in one of the suburbs. Victoria after her marriage left the public stage and gave her great musical talent entirely for the relief of the distressed and suffering and sinful. Richard and she worked together in the dark places of humanity and gave of their best and choicest for the blessing of the world, and always in their home there was the burden calmly and lovingly borne of the wreck of Victor. Every night of her life Victoria played for him. The music seemed to quiet his restless rage of soul but did not seem to change him. The burden was always the same. It remained in the home life of these two children of God and the Master's strength upheld them in it all.

The evening of the last day of the year was drawing to its close when Victoria and Richard who had been sitting before the fire after tea heard steps outside and presently the bell rang and Rachel and Tom came in. The visits between the friends were frequent and they drew up chairs about the fire and chatted over old times as the approaching New Year carried them back to the events of a year ago.

"Is it true, Mrs. Howard," inquired Richard, "that Tom was so confused about a year ago tomorrow that he didn't know what he was talking about?"

Rachel, prettier than ever, turned to Tom and said, "Tom, what did you tell Mr. Bruce that morning?"

"Honest now, I didn't tell him anything in detail -- only -- that I was an idiot and that wasn't any news to Dick."

"An idiot! After you left me?"

"Of course!" said Tom boldly. "I am always out of my mind away from you." They were all laughing in the lightness of their hearts over this not very serious talk when the bell rang again and soon John King was ushered in.

"What! Firelight! No, don't light up for me. Let me sit here and grow young where you young people can't see my grey hairs."

So they widened the circle and let him in and King led then to bring up the old times and noted it with great pleasure as the light revealed the pure development of face and soul in each one of his young friends.

Finally Victoria arose and went into the next room where Victor lay. She was gone several moments and at last to the surprise of the rest she came back wheeling Victor.

"I asked him if he didn't want to come out here to-night," Victoria whispered to Richard as she bent down over him. "And he said yes."

She began to play while the rest sat in the firelight and the pale set face of the once proud handsome Victor stared out of its reclining position with the firelight glancing on it so that John King from his position was the only one of the company who clearly caught any glimpse of it.

Victoria played, as she always did, with a tenderness and pathos that had lost but little since the day of her public triumphs. To-night she played something of her own composing. It was a prayer. The friends sat in perfect silence. John King had his hands clasped over his knee. The fire danced on the wall. The music seemed to be a part of the light. Victor's face lay white and unmoved as always. Suddenly as John King looked up at this white cold face, a tear rolled over its cheek. The firelight revealed that much. No one else saw it. Not even Victoria. Only one tear. "Yet it might mean a soul redeemed," John King thought, "No," he said to himself, "I will not say anything to Victoria about it to-night. I will speak of it to-morrow." The music went on, and to John King it came from heaven now. When it ceased, Victoria wheeled Victor back into the other room.

Mr. King had already risen to go.

"A Happy New Year to you all. The happiest of all your lives!" He spoke to all four of them but he looked at Victoria and Richard thinking of that warm tear that had rolled over that marble cheek.

"The same to you, sir!" came the greeting from the four friends as they stood together and John King went out and left them there on the threshold of another great stretch of God's time, not knowing the future but ready to commit it to God's keeping and strong in the service of Him who is the rightful Master of us all.

~ end of chapter 12 ~