listen to their sweet notes, or that the step she was about to take would sever her forever from her childhood's home. Hark! what is that she hears? A light foot is on the stairs, a soft voice is in her ear; her mother stands before her. "Oh Mary, you will not leave me will you?"
It was hard to answer that pleading. Mary was the only sunbeam that had cheered that poor woman's existence since she had led a married life.
Thwarted in her early love by the opposition and interference of her friends, she had accepted Mr. Kingley out of revenge on them, which, alas! fell most heavily on herself. Neither bringing him any love, or receiving any in return, she was borne down under a despotic rule which was submitted to only because she must. Her sympathies were all with Mary, whose trials called up a painful reminiscence of her own bitter experience, but in the loneliness of her heart at the thought of being separated from her, she almost chided her for permitting another love to step between them. Mary looked at her for a few moments with those trusting, modest blue eyes of hers, now beaming with the celestial glow of spiritual triumph, saying, "Mother, it is not all of life to live; the future is beyond. Whatever happiness we are deprived of in this life, we shall certainly reap hereafter if we do our duty; or if we commit an error, shall not he who has himself shared our weakness, out of that unbounded mercy which it was his mission to preach here on earth, bear us in remembrance to the Throne of pardoning grace, where all sins shall be blotted out when, like the prodigal son,
