Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/116

106 What man or woman thinking over the past has not said—"Oh, could I but live my life over again, I would not have done this thing or that"? And I, with my evil past laid out before me, could live it again, casting out the weeds and cultivating the trodden flowers; with nothing to hinder me, not even the sensual flesh that lay upstairs, a prison-house for the spirit of that good man whose body I was inhabiting and whose life I proposed to live.

I closed the door of my own house and went up the tiny garden to the next; as I did so, I heard the patter of little feet and a childish voice calling, "Here's papa! Here's papa!"

I opened the door and took the little darling into my arms. Never had I felt such happiness as when the innocent parted lips met mine and the soft baby-hands went round my neck. I stood still to take in the joy of it, but the child drew back in my arms and for a moment she sat quite quiet, and then she struggled until I had to let her down.

"It's not my papa!" she sobbed, running into the little sitting-room. "Oh, gran'ma, 'tis not my own papa!"

Mechanically I hung my hat upon the rack in