Some few, of course, of the criminal class fled away, were re-arrested, and completed their term in the barrack gaols in town. The operation of the law of heredity was not suspended, but in the majority of cases love and wisdom wrought their work. The youth whose existence had become a menace to society was transformed in the course of years into a prospering yeoman. The prospect of winning land and a home by honest means, of acquiring an assured position among a free community, won the wavering to the ranks of industry. The alternative to a life of vice and crime was no longer one of hopeless, life-long drudgery. "Honesty" was at length "the better policy," and self-interest threw its tremendous weight into the scales that were trembling in the balance.
This spirit of hope, prospect of betterment, and of ownership, Wrought a like transforming effect upon those mentally and physically afflicted. Their spirits revived, and in many instances lifted them out of the trammels of disease in which they had long lain.
If any spark of health lingers in the pallid cheek, in the confused mind or vitiated heart, let the free air of the country play on that cheek and gladden, as it must, that heart; put some implement of industry into the unsteady hand; let the man work for himself, for a home, and if it be not altogether too late, the sick will revive, and rejoice in the healthful pleasure of making a plot of God's earth fruitful, and their own.
One Saturday afternoon Gwyneth, taking Willie with her for company, sailed across the lake—she was an expert yachtswoman now—to see how Nurse Maggie and her friends fared at Hygeia. A dozen times she paused, after landing, and peeped into happy homes, within or about which, young and old, hale and sick were
