"Ah, well, then we've changed characters, I suppose," said she, fiercely. "Look here!" and snatching a bottle from behind the head of her bed, she put it to her lips, and gulped down a terrible draught. How had she procured it? She went out in the nice shawl, she had returned without it. A most fearful relapse very soon took place. All the nursing, and restraint, and care had to be gone through again, and many a time poor Matthew thought his trouble was greater than he could bear. His Bible, and little Josy, and Mr. and Mrs. Field were, however, blessings spared to him still, and he tried to take comfort.

There soon came to be serious cause for alarm in the turn the illness was taking, and at last the doctor gave his opinion. that Mrs. Hill would not recover.

This was a great shock. Matthew had so fondly hoped that some day-he would not mind waiting a long time for it —but that some day he might once more have a happy home, where the love and service of God should be the ruling principle.

Now all hope was dashed down, and there was to be no home for the widower and his motherless boy.

Mrs. Hill had been favoured with 'a fair beginning in domestic life, and she had herself put out its tender light. She had been trusted with opportunity to be as a ministering angel to a penitent heart, and she had scorned the holy mission. She had adopted a vice that once she loathed, and had become herself an exhibition of her weakness and its power. Through all she had neglected and insulted God, and nowwhat of it?

Why now, even now, by the lips of the husband she had despised, came messages of pity and promises of help from the God she had so dishonoured. Nigh or far off, obstinate and vicious, or yielding and chastened, the call floats over the

wide waste of sin and ruin, and does its merciful work. “Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die? Oh! Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in Me is thine help." "Look unto Me and be ye saved." Oh, look. Terrible is the bite of the fiery serpent you have cherished in your bosom, potent is the poison that has corrupted your blood; but more potent than the poison is the purifier-"Where sin abounds grace does much more abound." Oh, lover of drink, as well of any other sin, before it is too late, "Look!" and "Live!"

But poor unhappy Jane fretted, and chafed, and tormented herself and everybody else in the house. She knew all the texts that shut out hope, and gave herself up for lost. It was not penitence, but a yielding to some incomprehensible tyrant which she called "fate," and sometimes it seemed as if the spirit of temper and love of her own way were behind the 'scene, prompting the opposition she made to the gospel of peace.

Mrs. Oakland came and talked and read and prayed. A minister came and did the same. Prayer was offered by Matthew and his Christian friends, and still the hard woman seemed unmoved. At times, when conscious, she would say that God had forsaken her; but she forgot that she had not sought Him, nor cared for the knowledge of His ways. There are awful hints of the consequence of refusing to hear Him when He speaks in love, and He must be heard and heeded sometimes.

Matthew was sitting alone by her bed one night when, after a long time of apparent unconsciousness, she began to talk to herself. "Yes," said she, "I know it; I did drive him away, but I'll never acknowledge it. My poor baby. Yes, of course I gave her that horrid drug, and it sent her to heaven. But I didn't mean that; and the arm—I didn't know I put it out when I threw the child into bed; but that did it,

and she's gone too. And do they talk to me of heaven? What have I to do with heaven? I don't want to go to heaven! Everything there is against me. Oh, that I could disbelieve in such things."

Thus she muttered long and bitterly, and memory seemed to be casting up before her the things that but for her own. fault would never have been. Was not a bad temper at the beginning of them all? A little season of softening there did seem just before the last, but it was expressed in anguish so terrible, fear so distracting, cries so piercing, that when, after a paroxysm that seemed to rend her frame, she implored them to save her from everlasting burnings and to pray to Jesus for her, she sank back in their arms a corpse, the sudden cessation of noise and distraction, after being wrought up to such a state of excitement, overpowered poor Matthew so far that he nearly fainted on the floor. Mr. Field had taken his weeping Ellen downstairs, and kneeling down by her, with drops of perspiration standing on his brow, deeply and fervently blessed God, who had saved him from dying a drunkard's death.

All the requisite attention was paid to the poor remains in solemn silence. No one spoke of Jane for many a day; even Mrs. Swinden heard of her without a remark as she took her appointed place at the prison work to which her misdeeds had at last brought her.

Matthew was sadly unsettled; the care of a house was too much for him, and indeed it was not required for himself and his one only treasure left to provide for. So he determined at last to accept the kind offer that had been made to him by Messrs. Carver and Davis, and he would go and reside somewhere near to his friend Robert Taylor, for whom he had conceived a warm respect and affection. Benjamin Field would

gladly have kept him nearer, but his judgment went with the plan, and preparations were made for early departure.

Before you go to bed, my boy, I want you to have a walk with me," said Matthew to his little son on the last evening before the journey.

"Yes, father," said the boy, "I know. I want to see it once more too; and I've got some roots of violets and forgetme-nots that Mr. Field gave me, and I'm going to plant them there."

Matthew looked earnestly at the child, and drew him to his bosom. He felt that he had done wrong to bury all his feelings in his own heart and to leave his boy to do the same. Josy had needed comfort, for his darling sister had been the companion and friend of his short life, and the parting must have been very grievous to him: he had sat quiet and said nothing, but he never wanted to play now. To be with his father and watch him seemed all he cared for. He looked pale and thin still, and Matthew hoped that the total change would do him good.

Hand in hand they went together to the churchyard, where lay the mother and her two little girls. A head-stone had been placed by the graves with nothing but the names and dates inscribed upon it. They stood in silence some time, until the little boy's sobs startled Matthew, and he saw the child throw himself passionately on his sister's grave, and try to clasp it in his arms.

"Oh, Daisy!" he sobbed, "where are you? Do you ever love me now?"

"He wants love," thought Matthew. "Yes, I have something to live for still."

"Listen to me, Josy," he said, lifting the boy in his arms and sitting on a gravestone close by. "I wanted you here, in this spot, to promise before God and me that you will never

drink anything that can make you tipsy! But for drink those dear ones would have been with us now. It was drink that made me go away from home, and brought all our troubles."

"Oh! father," said Josy, clasping him round the neck, "you are good now, Daisy said so."

"God has been very gracious to me, Josy," said the poor father, with tears flowing fast. "Will you promise?"

"Yes, father, I will. I shall never drink such things, I know I shan't, for Daisy hated them."

What Daisy knew about them Matthew dared not ask. Then they planted the violets and forget-me-nots on the little grave, Josy patted the turf lovingly round them, and hand in hand the tearful pair left the graveyard.

CHAPTER XXIV.

ADDITION WITHOUT IMPROVEMENT.

R. LEWIS was determined to take no refusal from any one but Emily Taylor herself, not believing that any girl could resist his attractions, of which he himself entertained the highest possible opinion. But Emily happily was by education and principle proof against

those ornamental gildings which are always rubbed off after a short show, and exhibit the kind and quality of the metal beneath. The fact of her parents' disapproval would have been sufficient, even had she felt any inclination towards her suitor; but as she had none whatever, it was painful and displeasing to her to be urged on a