blood can't bear any more. If ever a woman did her best I have, and done it with nothing, and got no thanks for it; now I've got to the end of my rope. If I have strength enough to crawl back into bed, it is all there is left of me."

But for all that, she tried to do something else. Three times she made an effort to clear away the few dirty things on that dirty table, and each time felt the deadly faintness creeping over her, which sent her back frightened to the chair. The children came in, crying, and she tried to untie a string for one, and find a pin for the other; but her fingers trembled so that the knot grew harder, and not even a pin was left for her to give them, and she finally lost all patience with their cross little ways and gave each a slap and an order not to come in the house again that forenoon.

The door was ajar into the most discouraged looking bedroom that you can think of. It was not simply that the bed was unmade; the truth is, the clothes were so ragged that you would have thought they could not be touched without falling to pieces; and they were badly stained and soiled, the print of grimy little hands being all over them. Partly pushed under, out of sight, was a trundle-bed, that, if anything, looked more repulsive than the large one. There was an old barrel in the corner, with a rough board over it, and a chair more rickety than either of those in the kitchen, and this was the only furniture there was in that room.

The only bright thing there was in it was the sunshine, for there was an east window in this room, and the curtain was stretched as high as it could be. To the eyes of the poor tired woman who presently dragged herself into this room, the light and the heat from the sun seemed more than she could bear, and she tugged at the brown paper curtain so fiercely that it tore half across, but she got it down, and then she fell forward among the rags of the bed with a groan.

Poor Mrs. Decker! I wonder if you have not imagined all her sorrowful story without another word from me!

It is such an old story; and it has been told over so many times, that all the children in America know it by heart.

Yes; she was the wife of a drunkard. Not that Joe Decker called himself a drunkard; the most that he ever admitted was that he sometimes took a drop too much! I don't think he had the least idea how many times in a month he reeled home, unable to talk straight, unable to help himself to his wretched bed.

I don't suppose he knew that his brain was never free from the effects of alcohol; but his wife knew it only too well. She knew that he was always cross and sullen now, when he was not fierce, and she knew that this was not his natural disposition. No one need explain to her how alcohol would effect a man's nature; she had watched her husband change from month to month, and she knew that he was growing worse every day.

There was another sorrow in this sad woman's heart. She had one boy who was nearly ten years old, when she married Mr. Decker; and people had said to her often and often, "What a handsome boy you have, Mrs. Lloyd; he ought to have been a girl." And the first time she had felt any particular interest in Joe Decker was when he made her boy a kite, and showed him how to fly it, and gave him one bright evening, such as fathers give their boys. This boy's father had died when he was a baby, and the Widow Lloyd had struggled on alone; caring for him, keeping him neatly dressed, sending him to school as soon as he was old enough, bringing him up in such a way that it was often and often said in the village, "What a nice boy that Norman Lloyd is! A credit to his mother!" And the mother had sat and sewed, in the evenings when Norman was in bed, and thought over the things that fathers could do for boys which mothers could not; and then thought that there were things which mothers could do for girls that fathers could not, and Mr. Joseph Decker, the carpenter, had a little girl, she had been told, only a few years younger than her Norman. And so, when Mr. Decker had made kites, not only, but little sail boats, and once, a little table for Norman to put his school books on, with a drawer in it for his writing-book and pencil, and when he had in many kind and manly ways won her heart, this respectable widow who had for ten years earned her own and her boy's living, married him, and went to keep his home for him, and planned as to the kind and motherly things which she would do for his little girl when she came home.

Alas for plans! She knew, this foolish woman, that Mr. Decker sometimes took a drink of beer with his noon meal, and again at night, perhaps; but she said to herself, "No wonder, poor man; always having to eat his dinner out of a pail! No home, and no woman to see that he had things nice and comfortable. She would risk but what he would stay at home, when he had one to stay in, and like a bit of beefsteak better than the beer, any day."

She had not calculated as to the place which the beer held in his heart. Neither had he. He was astonished to find that it was not easy to give it up, even when Mary wanted him to. He was astonished at first to discover how often he was thirsty with a thirst that nothing but beer would satisfy. I have not time for all the story. The beer was not given up, the habit grew stronger and stronger, and steadily, though at first slowly, the Deckers went down. From being one of the best workmen in town, Mr. Decker dropped down to the level of "Old Joe Decker," whom people would not employ if they could get anybody else. The little girl had never come home save for a short visit; at first the new mother was sorry, then she was glad.

As the days passed, her heart grew heavier and heavier; a horrible fear which was almost a certainty, had now gotten hold of her—that her handsome, manly Norman was going to copy the father she had given him! Poor mother!

I would not, if I could, describe to you all the miseries of that long day! How the mother lay and tossed on that miserable bed, and burned with fever and groaned with pain. How the children quarreled and cried, and ran into mother, and cried again because she could give them no attention, and made up, and ran out again to play, and quarreled again. How the father came home at noon, more under the influence of liquor than he had been in the morning; and swore at the table still standing as he had left it at breakfast time, and swore at his wife for "lying in bed and sulking, instead of doing her work like a decent woman," and swore at his children for crying with hunger; and finally divided what remained of the bread between them, and went off himself to a saloon, where he spent twenty-five cents for his dinner, and fifty cents for liquor. How Norman came home, and looked about the deserted kitchen and empty cupboard, and looked in at his mother, and said he was sorry she had a headache, and sighed, and wished that he had a decent home like other fellows, and wished that a doctor could be found, who didn't want more money than he was worth, to pay him for coming to see a sick woman, and then went to a bakery and bought a loaf of bread, and a piece of cheese, and having munched these, washed them down with several glasses of beer, went back to his work. Meantime, the playing and the quarreling, and the crying, went on outside, and Mrs. Decker continued to sleep her heavy, feverish sleep.

Several times she wakened in a bewilderment of fever and pain, and groaned, and tried to get up, and fell back and groaned again, and lost her misery in another unnaturally heavy sleep, and the day wore away until it was three o'clock in the afternoon. The stages would be due in a few minutes—the one that