withholding of the crowning blessing of a woman’s life, to hold her own babe to her breast, was all the harsher measure, that Martha knew her husband in his secret heart brooded over their long disappointment and nursed it as a grievance. Poor Martha! How many prayers, how many vows, were thine for this boon so freely granted to your husband’s poorest workman!

It was in vain that Martha tried to stay her heart’s longings by filling a mother’s place to the little niece left by that graceless Richard. All that duty dictated Martha did; did ungrudgingly conscientiously. But there is one thing in this world that is absolutely beyond the human will: it is the human heart. Love knows no reason, and is uninfluenced by the sternest logic. It is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth. School herself as Martha would she came, in time, to have a smouldering jealousy of little Dorothy, and the child’s quick perception taught it to shun the eye, and soon the company, of her aunt, and turn for comfort to buxom, homely Betty.

It is a Sunday afternoon in the Summer of the year ’45—a glorious summer’s afternoon. The garden at Wilberlee, stretching below the parlour window right down to the river-side—no great stretch, indeed—is ablaze with colour. The sky overhead is of rich deep blue, flecked with trailing wisps of feathery cloudlets. The lark sings high in mid ether. From the meadows round about comes the scent of the hay, and the garden gives forth its fragrance of musk and rose. In a low basket-chair, placed beneath the shades of an umbrageous chestnut tree, Mrs. Tinker sits, stiff, erect, unyielding. She is dressed in rich dark silk, and the lace of collar and cuffs have come from the skilled fingers of the nuns of Belgian convents. A religious periodical, the “Baptist Magazine,” lies unheeded on her lap, for Martha is watching, with wistful eyes, the graceful movements of a young girl, who flits from flower to flower, and bends occasionally to snip a bloom or leaf.

“Why are you getting flowers of a Sunday: Dorothy? You know your uncle would not like it. I’m sure we don’t want any more in the house—the parlour smells almost sickly with them—besides, it’s Sunday.”

“I don’t want them for the parlour, aunt Martha. They are for poor Lucy Garside.”

“Who’s Lucy Garside?”

“Why, aunt, how can you forget? She worked in uncle’s mill till she had to leave. It is something the matter with her legs and spine. Don’t you mind that pretty, rosy Lucy Garside, that used to be in your class at the Sunday School? But she isn’t rosy 

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