can bestow some money on them. Oh, you can do a vast deal of good with this sovereign !"

The voice of Conscience had grown more feeble now; it always sinks to a whisper when we refuse to listen to its warning. Still Conscience murmured, "It is a good thing to help poor people, a kind thing to please little Lucy, but not if the first step to either action be wrong. Never do evil that good may come of it." But then the bad voice spoke again, and quite drowned the words of Conscience. I don't know what it could have said, and do not wish to know. It is very sad to record that Helen, with trembling fingers, took up the piece of gold, placed it in a little purse, and then locked them both up

in her writing-desk. While she was doing this so silently, so quietly, by some strange chance a little bird flew in at the open window, fluttered round her bed for a moment, and then, finding its mistake, darted like an arrow again to the open air.

At another time Helen would have been rather interested at such an incident-would perhaps have tried to assist the bird's escape from her room-would certainly not have been terrified. But now she turned pale with fear: was it fear of a linnet or sparrow?—and it was with difficulty she refrained from screaming. When she recovered herself a little, she turned round, and now the empty drawer seemed to gape at her with reproaches. She felt it quite im

possible that she could take it back to her aunt; some strange influence seemed to forbid this apparently natural proceeding; and creeping softly into the lobby, she waited till a servant passed near, and then asked her to replace the drawer in Mrs. Travers' room.

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CHAPTER III,

PLOTTING AND PLANNING.

"My dear Helen," said Mrs. Beecham to her daughter, "how grave and silent you are to-day! do you not feel well?"

"I am quite well, thank you, mamma, replied Helen, continuing her work, which, however, she was executing in a slow, listless manner.

"Then I suspect you are already tired of your task, and that little Lucy's doll will not have quite so ample a wardrobe as you at first intended."

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No, mamma," returned Helen," indeed I am not tired."

"Then why is it, my child," asked Mrs. Beecham with a smile, " that you lay it down from time to time, and sigh, and look so very solemn about it?"

Helen's instant answer was a blush, which it so happened Mrs. Beecham did not observe; and then, feeling she must say something, she murmured, “I don't know why."

Helen had not deliberately intended to tell a falsehood; but a little selfexamination would have convinced her that she had done so, and thus taken a second step in the painful and degrading course which an act of deception had opened for her. The reason that she was listless at her work, that she laid it down from time to time, and that she was unusually grave, was a very