She stopped, her face turned from him.

"I will send you to some of the city missionaries. I should like to help you. I

He would have exhorted her to reform as kindly as he knew how; he felt uncomfortable at letting her go so he remembered just then who washed the feet of his Master with her tears. But she would not listen. She turned from him, and out into the storm, some cry on her lips it might have been:

"There an't nobody to help me. ing to be better!"

I was go

She sank down on the snow outside, exhausted by the racking cough which the air had again brought on.

The sexton found her there in the shadow, when he locked the church doors.

man, she lying there alone in the snow; he lingered, hesitated, thought of his own warm home, looked at her again. If a friendly hand should save the Creature - he had heard of such things. Well? But how could he take her into his respectable home? What would people say?—the sexton of the temple! He had a little wife there too, pure as the snow upon the ground to-night. Could he bring them under

the same roof?

"Meg! speaking in his nervous way, though kindly, "you will die here. I'll call the police and let him take you where it's warmer." But she crawled to her feet again. "No you won't!"

Then she walked away as fast as she was able, till she found a still place down by the water, where no one could see her. There she stood a moment irresolute, looked up through the storm as if searching for the sky, then sank upon her knees down there in the silent shade of some timber.

Perhaps she was half frightened at the act, for she knelt so a moment without speaking. There she began to mutter: "May be he won't drive me off; if they did, may be he won't. I should just like to tell him, any way!"

So she folded her hands, as she had folded them once at her mother's knee.

O Lord! I'm tired of being Meg. I should like to be somebody else!"

Then she rose, crossed the bridge, and on past the thinning houses, walking feebly through the snow that drifted against her feet.

She did not know why she was there, or where she was going. She repeated softly to herself now and then the words uttered down in the shade of the timber, her brain dulled by the cold, faint, floating dreams stealing into them.

Meg! tired of being Meg! She wasn't always that. It was another name, a pretty name she thought, with a childish smile- Maggie. They always called her that. She used to play about among the clover-blossoms and buttercups then; the pure little children used to kiss her; nobody hooted after her in the street, or drove her out of church, or left her all alone out in the snow - Maggie!

Perhaps, too, some vague thought came to her of the mournful, unconscious prophecy of the name, as the touch of the sacred water upon her baby-brow had sealed it. Magdalene.

She stopped a moment, weakened by her

Yet it might have been a face as fair and pure as theirs; kisses of mother and husband might have warmed those drawn and hueless lips; they might have prayed their happy prayers, every night and morning, to God. It might have been. You would almost have thought he had meant it should be so, if you had looked into her eyes sometimes. Perhaps, when she was on her knees by the timber; or when she listened to the chant, crouching out of sight in the church.

Well, it was only that it might have been. Life could hold no possible, blessed change for her, you know. Society had no place for it, though she sought it carefully, with tears. Who of all God's happy children that he had kept from sin, would have gone to her and said, "My sister, his love holds room for you and me;" have touched her with her woman's hand, held out to her her woman's help, and blessed her with her woman's prayers and tears?

Do you think Meg knew the answer to this question? Had she not learned it well, in seven wandering years? Had she not read it in every blast of this bitter night, out into which she had come to find a helper, when all the happy world passed by her, on the other side? She stood there, looking at the glittering of the city, then off into the gloom where the path lay through the snow. Some struggle in her face. "Home!" muttering, "home and mother! She don't want me - nobody wants me. I'd better go back."

The storm beat upon her. She looked once more upon the city; then down the drifted path. But she did not stir.

"I should like to see it, just to look in the window a little-it wouldn't hurt 'em any. Nobody'd know."

She turned, walking slowly where the snow lay pure and untrodden. On, out of sight of the city, where the fields were still. Thinking, only as she went, that nobody would know. She would see the old home out in the dark; she could even say good-by to it, quite out

loud, and they wouldn't hear her, or come and drive her away. And then

She looked around where the great shadows lay upon the fields, felt the weakening of her limbs, her failing breath, and smiled. Not Meg's smile. Something very quiet, with a little quiver in it. She would find a still place under the trees somewhere; the snow would cover her quite out of sight before morning — the pure, white snow. She would be only Maggie then. The road, like some familiar dream, wound at last into the village. Down the street where her childish feet had pattered in their playing, by the old town-pump, where, coming home from school, she used to drink the cool, clear water on summer noons, she passed - a silent shadow. She might have been the ghost of some dead life, so moveless was her face. stopped at last, looking about her. "Where? I'most forget."

She

Turning out from the road, she found a brook half-hidden under the branches of a dripping, tree-frozen now, only a black glare of ice, where she pushed away the snow with her foot. It might have been a still, green place in summer, with banks of moss, and birds singing overhead. Some faint color flushed all her face; she did not hear the icicles dropping from the lonely tree.

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Yes," softly to herself, "this is it. The first time I ever saw him, he stood over there under the tree. Let me see; wasn't I crossing the: brook? Yes, I was crossing the brook; on the stones. I had a pink dress. I looked in the glass when I went home," brushing her soft hair out of her eyes. "Did I look pretty? I can't remember. It's a great while ago."

She came back into the street after that, languidly, for the snow lay deeper. The wind, too, had chilled her more than she knew. The sleet was frozen upon her mute white face. She tried to draw her cloak more closely around her, but her hands refused to hold it. She looked at them curiously.

"Numb? How much further, I wonder?" It was not long before she came to it. The house stood up silently in the night. A single light glimmered far out upon the garden. Her eye caught it eagerly. She followed it down, across the orchard, and the little plats where the flowers used to be so bright all summer long. She had not forgotten them. She used to go out in the morning and pick them for her mother-a whole apronful, purple, and pink,

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and white, with dew-drops on them. She was fit to touch them then. Her mother used to smile when she brought them in. Her mother! Nobody ever smiled so since. Did she know it? Did she ever wonder what had become of her the little girl who used to kiss her? Did she ever want to see her? Sometimes, when I she prayed up in the old bed-room, did she remember her daughter who had sinned, or guess that she was tired of it all, and no one in the wide world would help her?

She was sleeping there now. And the father. She was afraid to see him; he would send her away, if he knew she had come out in the snow to look at the old home. She wondered if her mother would.

Then she opened the gate and went in. The house was very still. So was the yard, and the gleam of light that lay golden on the snow. The numbness of her body began to steal over her brain. She thought at moments, as she crawled up the path upon her hands and knees

for she could no longer walk-that she was dreaming some pleasant dream; that the door would open, and her mother come out to meet her. Attracted like a child by the broad belt of light, she followed it over and through a piling drift. It led her to the window where the curtain was pushed aside. She managed to reach the blind, and so stand up a moment, clinging to it, looking in, the glow from the fire sharp on her face. Then she sank down upon the snow by the door.

Lying so, her face turned up against it, her stiffened lips kissing the very dumb, unanswering wood, a thought came to her. She remembered the day. For seven long years she had not thought of it.

A spasm crossed her face, her hands falling clenched. Who was it of whom it was written, that better were it for the man if he had never been born? Of Magdalene, more vile than Judas, what should be said?

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Yet it was hard, I think, to come back to the home in which her mother was, and did not know; to fall so upon the very threshold near the quiet, peaceful room, with the warmth, and light, and rest; to stay all night in the storm, with eyes turned to that dead, pitiless sky, without one look into her mother's face, without one kiss, or gentle touch, or blessing, and die so, looking up! No one to hold her hand and look into her eyes, and hear her say - sorry for it all! That they

e was sorry

should find her there in the morning, when her poor, dead face could not see if she was forgiven!

"I should like to go in," sobbing with the first tears of many years upon her cheek — weak pitiful tears, like a child's —“just in out of the cold!"

Some sudden strength fell on her after that. She reached up, fumbling for the latch. It opened at her first touch; the door swung wide into the silent house.

She crawled in then, into the kitchen where the fire was, and the crimson chair; the plants in the window, and the faded cricket upon the hearth. The dog, too, roused from his nap behind the stove. He began to growl at her, his eyes on fire.

"Muff!" smiling weakly, stretching out her hand. He did not know her he was fierce with strangers. "Muff! don't you know me? I'm Maggie; there, there Muff, good fellow!”

She crept up to him fearlessly, putting both her arms about his neck, in a way she had of soothing him when she was his play-fellow. The creature's low growl died away. He submitted to her touch, doubtfully at first, then he crouched on the floor beside her, wagging his tail, wetting her face with his huge tongue.

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Muff, you know me, you old fellow! I'm sorry, Muff, I am -I wish we could go out and play together again. I'm very tired, Muff.” She laid her head upon the dog, just as she used to long ago, creeping up near the fire. A smile broke all over her face, at Muff's short, happy bark.

"He don't turn me off; he don't know; he thinks I'm nobody but Maggie."

How long she lay so, she did not know. It might have been minutes, it might have been hours; her eyes wandering all about the room, growing brighter too, and clearer. They would know now that she had come back; that she wanted to see them; that she had crawled into the old room to die; that Muff had not forgotten her. Perhaps, perhaps they would look at her not unkindly, and cry over her just a little, for the sake of the child they used to love.

Martha Ryck, coming in at last, found her with her long hair falling over her face, her arms still about the dog, lying there in the firelight.

The woman's eyelids fluttered for an instant, her lips moving dryly, but she made no sound. She came up, knelt upon the floor, pushed Muff

"EVEN AS THOU WILT."

Matt xv. 22-28.

"Have mercy on me, Lord!"

She followed Him, and cried; and, when there came No answer, followed, crying still the same,

"Have mercy on me, Lord!"

"Send her away," they said

They who should be dispensers of his grace,

Would have Him turn from her who sought his face; "Send her away," they said.

He spoke their thought aloud

"It is not meet to take the children's bread And cast it to the dogs"-as if He said, How poor ye are and proud.

"Yea, Lord; and yet the dogs

Eat of the crumbs that from the children fall,"
She pleaded" and there is enough for all,
For children and for dogs."

utterly free from pain, that they did not know when the tranquil breath ceased.

A neighbor, whose only son had gone to the war, was sleeping at the house that night, as she had done for many nights before; for she could not bear that the wife and daughter should be alone when the dreaded moment came. She was aroused in a moment, and rendered efficient aid to the mourners.

"If my Richard were but here!" she said to Ruth, as she went from room to room, arranging the disordered house.

Ruth did not answer; but in her heart she eagerly responded to the words. Half this great burden would, she thought, have been removed, had Richard Ashton been near. Two such lonely, desolate women sorely needed the comfort and support of a man's presence; especially as the man who should have been there, was one very near and dear to the heart of Ruth.

Mrs. Ashton remained with them until after the funeral; and then Ruth called up all her courage to meet the loneliness of their situation. Her mother seemed perfectly stupified with

no architectural courtesy could ever have been called a cottage, stands in the middle of a flat quarter acre of ground, facing the high road that leads from Granville to Waterbury. There are shrubs and flowers growing upon this unpicturesque square of land, but no trees, if we except a single magnificent horse-chestnut at the gate. But roses, lilacs and a fine show of currants and gooseberries, brighten up the otherwise desolate place, and a few straggling fuschias and geraniums lend an air of refinement and cultivation to its borders. Here lived and died one of the truest and bravest of men. In the hour of his country's peril, John Woodhouse sprang from his beloved retreat and fearlessly confronted the foe. He was fearfully wounded, and, at his earnest request, was brought home to die, instead of being carried to a hospital. Tended by his faithful wife and daughter, he lived on for weeks. Weeks in which the careful nurses built high hopes of recovery; but all unshared by the sick man himself.

He knew that the death blow only lingered, delayed by the fond attentions of the two who watched daily and nightly about his bed. It came at last.

Mrs. Woodhouse and Ruth were beside him, but his departure was so quiet, so gentle and so

hearth, where lately her husband had sat, and looked, with dry, burning eyes upon the bed where he had lain.

She resisted all Ruth's entreaties to go to bed; and the two sat up till morning, keeping sad vigil for the dead. Just as the gray dawn stole in at the window, Ruth heard her kind neighbor's step in the little yard, and hastened to meet her.

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"I came over early, Ruth," said the good woman, "for I have not slept all night, thinking of you and your poor mother. How is she?" Step in, and see her, do. She says nothing, and her eyes are fixed upon father's bed. I cannot arouse her to any exertion whatever. Don't leave me again until she is better.”

"I will stay with you, poor dear," were her welcome words as they turned toward the silent Silent indeed, forever! She had gone to rejoin the husband she had mourned, and poor desolate Ruth was alone!

woman.

Two days after, another funeral took its way from that dreary house; and then it was that Mrs. Ashton drew the bereaved girl to her own home. Unwillingly she went; but her friend had noted the hot fever of her cheek, the burning of her hand, and the eyes that seemed to be looking away into futurity with such a dreary,