bear. We've got a large farm, and it takes a great deal of hard work to carry it on; and sometimes father isn't considerate: but he's a good man in the main, and means well, and you musn't allow yourself to get worked up so, for David's younger than you, and you ought to set him an example."

"Oh, don't be afraid of my influencing Dave, mother!" replied Tom, proudly. "As for father, the very reason that he is my father has kept me here, digging and delving; but I can't stand it forever! And, if anything should happen that I can't stay here, you'll remember that I told you 'twas only because I was ground down so, and hadn't anything pleasant like other fellows!"

"There, Tom, I wouldn't think of it any longer. "Tisn't any use to brood over troubles -everybody has their share!" and the crushed expression of the meek-eyed woman's face told that she had hers. Come, my son! bring me a pail of cool water from the well. I's time the dinner was on the table!"

Tom rose with alacrity-a sturdy, goodlooking lad of seventeen, with well-developed limbs and handsomely-cut features. He would do anything for his mother, whom he loved strongly; for she, with his brother Dave and three little sisters, engrossed all the affection the youth bestowed in the home, where the stern father, so "set in his own notions of right, repelled, instead of inviting, the confidence of his family.

After Tom had brought in the pail of water, and set it down on a bench in the open kitchen in the rear of the room where his mother was at work, he went out the back-door: as he passed the corner, where the long gable-roof slanted down to the level of the branches of the cherry and plum-trees behind the house, David, who had been sitting on the cellar-step just outside an open window of the kitchen, rose, and walked by his side down to the great barn, whose doors stood wide open, revealing the full-stowed mows, and the fowl strutting to and fro over the spacious floor, snapping up the scattered hay-seed or talking to each other in their own cackling tongue.

"I overheard what you said to mother after he went out," said Dave, pointing over his shoulder to where their father stood, unhitching a pair of farm-horses from a large rack by the bars that opened in the hay-field. "Do you *mean to clear out, Tom?" was questioned in a low, confidental tone.

"I shouldn't wonder if I did take his invita tion," replied Tom, with determined eye and mouth. "I'm tired to death of digging, digging all the time, and no fun at all. There's a wider life out in the world, somewhere; and I'm bound to have my share of it, and not stay cramped up here. But we won't talk of it any more now!" said Tom, evasively.

"Well, I shouldn't blame you a bit if you did run away," replied fourteen-year-old Dave. "There's no good times on this farm, and a fellow can't get any schooling, either, if he

wants it ever so bad, except a little in the winter, when father can't find any excuse for us to work out-doors. And yet, if he was only a mind to, you and I might both go to the academy and to college; for he's rich enough-I know that; owns farms and woodlands, and has lots of money at interest. If we were real poor there'd be some excuse for our digging so!" said the boy, bitterly.

"Well, it never 'll be any different, as I can see!" returned Tom, passionately. "I wouldn't mind working-I like work as well as anybody, and never shirk my share, and would be willing to stay at home and help carry on the farm, while you might go to college, for you care more about books than I do; but he won't have it so! Let him go his own way, and I'll go mine!" And he sat down in the barn-door and looked steadily a-head of him, with his determination imprinted on his set lips.

It was a fair picture that lay beneath the yellow, hazy glow of the hot August noon-the comfortable old farmhouse, with its smallpaned windows and gable-roof, the mossy wellcurb, with the tall, well-sweep above, and the sunken watering-trough, overtopped by clumps of plantain-leaves and white clover; the spacious out-buildings at the right, wearing an air of neatness and fulness; the hired men at work in the fields on the left, turning the hay in long billowy swathes; and beyond, the orchards, fields of corn, and the still uncut meadow lot, sweeping down to the distant river. In this picture there was thrift, affluence, and comfort, to an outside observer; but to the lad who sat viewing it with knitted brows, there were the dark shadows of ceaseless toil and deprivation hovering over it.

"It's no use talking!" he said, at length, doggedly. "Father won't do anything different! He'll pinch and work till he dies, and everybody round him 'll have to do the same. I suppose he's mad, now, because we're taking a bit of rest before the hands come up to dinner. But I reckon it'll be a long day, after this one, before I put my hand to the mowing again!"

He spoke this last sentence under his breath, so Dave did not hear; but the determination of his dark-brown eye did not abate, nor the dog. gedness that lay about his lips; and he sat quiet in the barn-door till his mother blew the horn that summoned the men from the fields to dinner.

Next morning Deacon Morris rose at the first cock-crowing, as was his wont. It was his boast that "nobody on his farm laid a-bed after the crack of day!" He left the bed-room; crossed the long, cool, dusky kitchen; lifted the hasp that secured the back door, and went out into the fresh morning air.

The east was just beginning to be aglow with a soft, rosy blush; the rest of the sky was in distinct and dull; the robins twittered and darted from the nests in the plum trees; the earth was moist and fragrant with its baptism of dew. By-and-bye the fiery sun would mount upward, and, with his hot breath, wilt and wither

Drawing a bucket of water from the old well, Deacon Morris poured it into the empty trough, stooped down and washed his face and hands, and stepped back to wipe them on the coarse roller which hung just inside the door; then went down the path that led to the great barn. He swung its doors wide open, letting out a strong fragrance of new-mown hay from the high mows, and the heaped load that yet stood on the cart, filling up the centre of the barn-floor; stepped in and fed the horses; and then went down to the yard where the cattle were. Buck and Bright, the two working oxen, lay in one corner, quietly ruminating, doubtless, of many a year's patient drawing in sleds and carts; while a group of cows were in the other, huddled together, and one large black one reposed in lonely dignity in the middle of the yard, rolling her great eyes with a quick, bright glance upon her master.

toiled hard at her tasks. She had always risen at four in the morning in summer, and five in winter; she milked four cows, and prepared the breakfast for her family and the hired men ; made butter and cheese for market, the sale of which was added to her husband's hoards, at first to help pay off the mortgage from the large farm he was trying to clear, and then to swell the funds he was investing in wood-lots and pastures; she raised flocks of turkeys and geese from a limited share of whose profits, as the Thanksgiving annual festivals came round, she was expected to provide the winter stock of clothing for herself and family; she spun yarn for sale, and all that was used at home; knitted socks in the long winter evenings; made and mended the clothes; dried apples, and preserved fruits and berries; did all the cooking, sweeping, washing, and ironing: in short, combined in herself the offices of wife, mother, housekeeper, and servant-all in the person sf one slender, delicate woman, who never found an uninterrupted hour to open a book for the cultivation of her mind, which hungered and starved the while.

Order was hardly restored, ere Mrs. Morris appeared at the barn-yard gate with a couple of milking-pails in her hands.

Tom Hood immortalized the toils of England's sewing-women, who sat all day, and deep into the nights, in stifling London garrets, plying their needles to the sad refrain of "stitch! stitch! stitch!" the while their hungry eyes were ever getting hollower, and their pinched faces were 66 weary, wan, and worn;" countless mournful monodies, more touching than "The African Slave's Lament," have been written on that dusky nation; but what poet's pen has ever chronicled the trials of the many overworked, broken-down, New England farmers' wives, who have dragged-and still drag ontheir appointed rounds of toil, and never think of lifting off the harness, until it crumbles away from their poor weary frames at the welcome call of the Master, who bringeth not only sleep, but rest, to those he summons-even death?

Hannah Morris was one of these. When she left her own home, at eighteen, to become the wife of the "likely young farmer," who was " real worker," and "would be fore-handed before he died," her cheek was blooming and her eye was bright; but twenty years had aged her so, that few would have recognized the fact that she had ever known a girlhood of beauty or elasticity of spirits, that now were dead to her for evermore.

What a round of slavery that woman's life had been! The mother of seven children-the eldest and youngest of whom had been lain to

you would have thought her over fifty-that she wore habitually that crushed, sad, weary look, as though life were very burdensome, and the grave would not be so very dreary when she laid down in it?

And yet no poet has ever written upon this theme! Possibly it is far too prosaic for them. Now and then some English tourist, who has been received into the families of affluence this side the water, chronicles a paragraph complimentary to "the delicate, spirituelle loveliness of American girls," so different from the beef and beer solidity of the women of his own nation, and adds: "They fade early, and yet usually attain a long life; from which fact we may conclude that they possess elastic frames and strong, wiry constitutions."

Yes, "elastic" we know they must be, else they could never endure so long; but the bow, long strained, must break at last; and so these poor tired women go down to their graves, glad to find the rest they never had in life.

Isaac Morris was deacon of the " "First Church"-one of the pillars of orthodoxy; but he worked his wife, his children, and hired men hard; and added farm to farm, acre to acre, and hundred after hundred to his gains.

On this August morning he looked frowningly on his wife as she entered the barn-yard. "It's later than usual, Hannah! The cows ought to a-been turned inter the lot before now, for it's the dew on the grass that makes the richest cream. Where's the hands? Abed yet? And the boys, too? That Tom has been huffy enough ever since the talk yesterday, because I wouldn't let him have his own way about that gambling-board, and he's goin' to keep it up by layin' abed this mornin'; but

"Where is he, then?"

"That's more 'n I can tell, sir!" answered David, resolved not to betray his brother to his father.

Deacon Morris left the barn-yard and started off for the house.

As soon as he was beyond hearing, the lad walked up beside his mother, and said: "I shouldn't wonder if Tom had taken father at his word, and gone, mother!"

"Gone! Tom gone!" echoed the woman, pausing in her milking, and turning a white, startled face upon her son.

"Yes, mother! But don't look so scairt!" he replied. "You know what was said by 'em both yesterday, and I guess Tom's made good his threat not to stand father's treatment any longer! I thought he really meant so then, when he said it."

"But, oh, I've heard him say it so many times before; and you don't really think he's gone! You don't know it, Davie?" asked the poor mother, imploringly, rising from her milking-stool and laying her hand on his arm. "Yes, mother, I do know that he meant to leave he told me so yesterday in the barn, after he went out," answered David. "I can't tell a lie to you. But I didn't think he meant to go so soon-to leave last night while we were asleep. He must have got out of the shed window, if the door was fastened when father came down."

"O Davie! Davie! I wish you'd told me!" said the mother, reproachfully. Why didn't you tell me? I'd have talked with him, and coaxed him to stay. Tom was always a good boy, and would do anything I asked him to."

"I tell you, mother, I didn't dream he meant to go so soon!" replied the lad, quite touched by her distress, and a vague feeling of remorse coming over him now his elder brother was really gone. "But don't feel so bad about it, mother!" he said, stoutly. "I know Tom. He's smart as a steel-trap; and 'twon't be long

before we shall hear from him-that he's got something to do somewhere, so he can make his way. He'll let you know, I mean. He'll write to us, mother."

While David was talking, he did not see his father returning from the house with great, angry strides, and pause a moment behind him in the barn-yard and overhear his last sentence. "Hah! you helped him off, did you? You told him to steal his clothes-the best Sunday suit I bought him-and clear out, did you?" he cried, passionately, taking hold of David's collar, and swinging him round, facing him.

Don't, Isaac Morris!" pleaded the poor trembling woman. "Don't hurt Davie! He isn't to blame! But is Tom really gone?" she asked, with a look on her face which betrayed that she expected, yet dreaded the answer.

"Gone! of course he has-the young rascal! Stolen his clothes, too! Not a rag worth wearing is left in the press. I thought so the moment Dave came out without him. He's been in regular sullen, slow fire all along these last six months-ever since I forbid his goin' to the singin'-school in the village; and that gambling diceboard, yesterday, fixed his flint for him. But let him go. He's made his bed, now let him lay on it! He never shall darken my doors again, let what will happen; and, if he comes back, I'll turn him away as I would a dog! And I forbid you from speakin' about him amongst you! Let his name be anathema and mar

"Isaac Morris, don't curse your own son!' said his pale wife, with more courage and dig. nity in her tone than it had held for many a year. "It ain't Christian-and you know you profess to follow the Bible."

The deacon stopped a moment, and a red flash came over the swart face, pale with anger before; then he said, contemptuously, "You go finish your milkin', woman, and not talk about things you don't understand! There! see what you have done, now! Ten quarts of good new milk lost!" (for just then old" Smut" lifted her hind-foot, and gave the pail a sturdy kick, which sent its contents in a foaming white pool upon the ground). "I should think there'd been mischief enough done for one day! David, did you know that Tom meant to run away?" he asked, sternly, turning towards him again.

All the proud, manly blood of the boy's heart was stirred. He hated his father, just then, for his cowardly attack upon his poor trembling mother, who had picked up her empty pail and turned to milk another cow; and he halfrejoiced in averting some share of the general blame to his own shoulders. So he did not reply evasively, or in the strict negative, as he might have done, but said, firmly, "He told me yesterday that he wasn't going to stand this sort of life much longer; though I didn't know that he meant to go off last-night, sir."

"What sort of life do you mean, sirrrah?" thundered the deacon, angrily.

"The sort that made Jack a dull boy-' all

work and no play,' father," replied the lad, coolly.

"Don't repeat over your potry to me, you young rascal!" was the irate command. "I see how 'tis; you two youngsters have put your heads together to conjure up this plot, and you're as much to blame as he is. Come round into the barn with me, sir!"

David obeyed. By the compression of his delicately-chiselled lips-his mother's lips they were-and the distension of his thin, proud nostrils, you saw that his spirit was arousedthat spirit which has carried heroes and martyrs to their fate; but, casting one encouraging, smiling glance to the trembling woman who paused in her milking with a stricken terror at her heart, he followed his father.

Deacon Morris shut the great barn doors closely behind them. Yet he need not; for David would not have flinched, or uttered a cry, if every blow of the lythe, darkly-red cowhide had taken his heart's blood.

Mrs. Morris rose from her task, put her hand to her heart, and staggered f. intly up to the house; while Jim Bailey-one of the hired hands, who had come out in season to overhear a portion of the conversation-kindly took her place, and presently carried in the two foaming milk-pails.

At six o'clock the sound of the horn brought Deacon Morris and his men into breakfast. David also was in his place; but no food passed his blue, pale, set lips. He was too sick to eat; and his lacerated shoulders quivered and throbbed under his coarse gingham shirt. When the meal was ended, the deacon said, with a preparatory 'hem :

"David, you may get yourself ready to go down to the medder lot and mow, to-day. Now Tom's gone on his own evil way, you'll have to knuckle down to a purty fair share of his work. I shan't have no gentleman in my family. Let this mornin's lesson be a warnin to you. You needed the chastisement of the rod, and I have administered it for your own good."

David did not reply, but he set his lips together more firmly as he rose, took down his straw hat from its peg on the wall, and went

out.

But that night-when the poor, almost heart-broken woman crept up to his chamber a few moments, to bathe his lacerated back-he said: "Mother, if 'twarnt for you, I'd follow Tom before daylight. But, for your sake, I'll stay here and try and obey father.'

'The next day was the Sabbath-the calm, blessed New England Sabbath-and Deacon Morris attended church three times, and, at the family altar, prayed with great emphasis for the rebellious and godless, who rise up against

the rule of their elders in the land."

And the passages he read from the Holy Book were culled from those portions red with the terrors of the Law, till all the still air of the summer twilight seemed to quake with the dread resonance of his stern, emphatic voice.

Ten years went by. No marked changes had come to Deacon Morris, except that he was

greyer, grimmer, nade longer prayers on Sunday nights, said shorter graces on week-days, and drove his hired help and family harder than ever.

David was a young man of twenty-four now; and helped "carry on the farm" under the surveillance of his father. Mrs. Morris looked older and paler, and seemed always tired, but still toiled on from morning till night the same as ever, assisted only by her eldest daughter Sarah; for the two other girls, Martha and Dorothy, girls of nineteen and seventeen, with a natural desire to escape the deprivations of their cheerless country home and to dress as well as others of their age, had obtained situations in a distant city-the one as milliner, and the other in a fancy-goods store, where her pretty face attracted many customers to her employers.

All were good, sensible girls; but Dolliefor so her name was abbreviated shortly after being transplanted to the city-was quite too young to be removed from a mother's watchful eye at just the age when youthful vanity may be fostered into a dangerous flame by the breath of that class of admirers with whom many of her fellows came in contact.

Tom had never been heard from-wayward Tom, the first-born boy, whom the poor mother though his name was always "banned, barred, ever mourned, and David daily thought of, and forbidden," when the stern ruler of the family was nigh. If Tom had ever written home, no such letter had been received; and none knew whether he was living or deadwhat distant or near shore held him now-or if his life's barque had crossed the Dark River to the Unknown Beyond.

"Hannah Morris was failing," the neighbours said. "She had the old-fashioned consumption. Sometimes folks lived for years, but they generally went sudden at last!" and her loss was often prophesied to the oid deacon, who grew more stern, penurious, and "set," as the years rolled by.

Some who pitied the poor, almost worn-out woman, were bold enough to express a hope that "if Deacon Morris ever got a second wife, 'twould be somebody who wouldn't be the slave poor Hannah had been ;" and even selected for him a grasping, avaricious, masculineframed widow, whose farm joined his, and whose "tender mercies" had proved "cruelties" to the two former spouses whom she had buried in the old graveyard over the hill. Therefore, great was the astonishment of the quiet farmingtown when the tidings circled throughout its breadth, one hot Jnly day, that Deacon Morris had fallen from a haymow to the floor of his great barn-broken a hip, and sustained such severe internal injuries, that old Doctor Benson had expressed his opinion that he could not survive.

There was a great sensation throughout the neighbourhood. Hay was left in long swaths; horses were detached from racks and harpessed into light buggies, for their owners to ride

over to the "Morris place" and see how the deacon really was.

But the fiery July sun mounted higher over the hayfields, and sunk to his bed in the crimson-piled west; the hot summer night came down, so sultry to the strong and well, and almost stifling the breath, growing ever shorter and fainter, on the lips of the dying man.

At sunset the family were gathered in the old bedroom adjoining the long, roomy kitchen. The tall, antique clock ticked solemnly; the great cat pattered up and down the floor, pausing before each one of the group, as if asking the meaning of the strange quiet that had fallen on the household, usually busy at this hour; a tame toad hopped out from its bed under the plaintain-leaves by the well-curb at the back door, and squatted upon the flat stone at the threshold, only to be stirred from its post by the footstep of a tall, bronzed, bearded man, who strode hastily into the little footpath leading around from the lane, crossed the kitchen floor, and joined the group in the bedroom.

At any other time Mrs. Morris would have turned paler, and pressed her hand to her heart, as she had a habit of doing when agitated; but now she only drew Tom's hand into hers, and whispered "Just in time,"

And David, too, awed by the Strange Presence whose noiseless footstep was creeping over the bedroom floor toward the dying man upon the pillows he had no time for ejaculations of surprise and welcome; while Sarah-good faithful girl-scarcely stirred from her station by the bed, where she was moistening the lips of the unconscious man.

years before, beneath which slept the first-born little Hannah, and the later one which held the buried baby-boy, last link between the mother's heart and Heaven.

But by-and-by-when the estate came to be settled, and it was known how many broad acres that grasping man had owned, and how many thousands were left, invested in bank. stocks or in mortgages on farms wide-scattered through the country-there were not wanting those who said :

:

"Perhaps, after all, it was the hand of Providence that took Deacon Morris away. His family can have some privileges now. Tom will stay at home, of course, and he and David manage the farm; and the girls wont need to go away and earn their living, with all that property left to be divided amongst them."

But it was too late. Habit becomes second nature. The seed had been sown, and the harvest must be reaped.

Money and lands were left for the inheritance of Deacon Morris's children, to be sure; but it could not benefit them now as it might have in earlier years.

Had not Tom-high-spirited, passionate, but noble-hearted Tom-been driven from his boy hood's home by his father's harshness and the denial of the harmless indulgencies and relax. ations necessary to his years, he would not have now felt the rover's unquenchable craving for the ten-year-gone life of adventure on foreign shores, to which, after a few months at the old homestead, he returned again.

But no response came. The dulled ear could not hear, the dimming eye could not see, the stiffening tongue could utter no word. Tom stood, vainly waiting for what did not come; and then, with a choking sensation in his throat, stepped back to his mother's side again.

Just then old Parson Meanwell, who had entered the bedroom a half hour before, knelt and offered a prayer for the sinking man; but ere it was concluded, the breath had fluttered out from his pale, blue lips. And so Deacon Morris "died and made no sign."

The neighbours talked it over that nightabout Tom's return. "What a pity that the two younger girls couldn't have been there, too! But the despatch didn't reach them in season. It was singular that Tom should have got there just in time!"

The funeral was large, as befitted a deacon of the Orthodox Church. All the deacon's good points "the upbuilding of Zion," in which he had assisted-"the great loss to his family, which could never be repaired," were dwelt upon in the lengthy sermon and the prayer; and then they laid him away in the grave hollowed beside the tiny mound raised there nearly thirty

settled into hopeless inertness and stolidity, careing for nothing beyond the rounds of the farm on which he remained, and at length marrying a commonplace girl, whose mind was of lower type of cultivation than his own, thus precluding the oftimes privilege of the wife lifting her husband out of the slough into which lack of early education or depraving circumstances may have cast him.

Had not Sarah-the good, faithful, practical elder daughter-witnessing the example of her hard-working mother, been brought up to think all of her sex born to fill the niche of household drudge, she would never have made her own life an exact copy of that mother's, and resigned the control of her own inheritance to the close-fisted, calculating farmer, who sought her hand because he reckoned rightly that she would become a "smart," "capable," "working" wife to help him acquire more property.

And Mattie and Dollie, too! Lively, pretty, apt girls, who, under the discipline of educa tion and cultivated society, would have ripened into sensible, intelligent women, who would have influenced for the better all with whom they came in contact; had their youth been cast under fostering circumstances, how widely