almost patrician delicacy, and with full as
much patrician tenderness. They were sweet
children, and she might well be proud of them,
and not unwisely anchor her whole cargo of
future happiness on their well-being and good
conduct..

The children had been just put to bed,
and Janet was working in the back parlour.
The shop was shut, and all was silent;
only the hurried tread of a few passers-by
was heard, mingled with the shrill laughter
of idle boys and girls congregated in the
lanes by the scanty gas-lights of the little
town.

A knock came to the street-door. Who
could it be at this time of night? The
widow led a quiet and respectable life, and
was not accustomed to visitors so late as this
—and was not fond of them either.
However, it might be a neighbour wanting
assistance in some way; so she rose and went
to the door, which she opened with a kind of
quake, feeling that presence of evil which sensitive
natures do feel, even while undiscovered.

"Who is there? " she said, shading the
candle with her hand, so that all the light
flared upon her own face.

"Janet, do you not know me? " said a
voice she knew too well. A man's hand
touched her arm, and her husband strode
into the shop.

He was paler than when she saw him last,
thinner, a trifle bald, and his hair was
sprinkled with grey. His eyes were bloodshot,
perhaps with travelling, and his whole
appearance was worn and shabby. Janet set
down the candle, and stood for a moment
irresolute. She neither screamed nor fainted;
but she looked ghastly by the flickering light,
and she could scarcely breathe.

"Janet," said her husband, in his gentlest
tone, taking her hand lightly between his own,
as one holding by sufferance, not by right,
"are you glad to see me again, or have I
behaved so badly, and you have been too
angry ever to forgive me? Shall I go back,
Janet, to all the misery of my self-reproaches,
feeling that you have not forgiven me, and
that God has not accepted my repentance, or
will you live with me again, a penitent and
reformed man? I have repented, wife, most
bitterly of all that I have done wrong against
you. Will you not allow my penitence to
produce my pardon? Eh, Janet?"

Janet was overcome. After all he was
her own husband, lawfully married by the
creed of her childhood, and bound by ties
that no man was to put asunder—the minister
had said so—and he was the father
of her children. If she herself still nourished
feelings of bitterness against him, had she the
right to deprive her little ones of a father?
Poor Janet! She gave a deep sob, and then
flung her arms round the man's neck, and
murmured some misquoted passages about a
prodigal son, which seemed to relieve her soul
mightily, though they were not quite correct.

Robert was taken to see his children as
they lay sleeping in their little cots by the
side of the mother's bed. And the sight
affected him much, to judge by his tears and
upturned eyes, his low-breathed blessings and
tender caresses. By the side of those little
cots he told Janet how guilty he had been,
but only for leaving her; he stoutly denied
all knowledge of or participation in the
robbery, occasioned, he suggested, by his
leaving the cottage-door ajar; how deeply he
felt his wickednes; and how resolved he was
that a future of untiring good should wash
out his past of evil. Janet, naturally a
credulous woman—because a fond one—was
doubly convinced, and doubly happy. She had
received back, not only her husband, but a saint
as well, and henceforth might expect
sanctification of heart together with happiness of
life in her renewed wedlock. She kissed her
husband tenderly and welcomed him anew,
saying, " I always believed you innocent!"

Janet's friends were all displeased when it
was noised abroad that Robert had returned,
and had been received by her. Miss Harrington
withdrew her custom, and denied her house;
and many of her old supporters grumbled at
her loudly, and called her a fool for her pains.
Janet let them grumble. Too happy in her
love, and too confident in her happiness, she
was indifferent to the storm without; and,
though not ungrateful for all that had
been done for her, she felt that she had
taken the better part by her reconciliation so
fully, that these murmurs sank into
insignificance before the weight of her spiritual
convictions. If she had been foolish, yet she had
been also morally right; and a conscientious
person can well bear up against the charge
of folly, when backed with this conviction of
right.

"Janet," said Robert, after he had been
with her about a month, " your custom has
fallen off very much. Your books do not give
one half they did before I came. How is this?"

He spoke in a dry unpleasant voice, with a
sharp suspicious glance, and a dictatorial
manner.

"I don't know, Robert," replied Janet,
quietly, " unless it be that I have offended some
of my friends, which I know I have done, and
my business has suffered in consequence."

"We can't go on in this way," Robert said,
with a still more unpleasant manner.

"Oh! I am not afraid! Steadiness will
bring it all back again."

"And in the meantime are we to starve?"

"Starve!—no, dear. I have plenty. I have
saved fifty pounds already. It is in the bank,
and we shall do very badly if we eat up that
before I get my custom back again."

Robert's eyes sparkled. " Fifty pounds!"
he said, coaxingly. " Little miser! you never
told me of this!"

Janet blushed painfully. Something
foreboded evil to her, and she would willingly
have retracted her admission, if she could have