life maimed. I shall yet see you smiling and happy again in our cottage, your innocence proved, your place restored, and friends all around you."

"How can that be?" said Harry; "there is only my word and character as evidence of my honesty. I cannot go back to the old place—never, never, Mother. What shall I do? Better die than live disgraced."

"Have no fear, Harry; I have none. I am sure all will be well, and your honesty proved. So go to sleep, as the surgeon directed. Have faith; you have shown courage." His mother smoothed the clothes over him, and gently stroked his hand, and he was silent, and fell asleep.

Presently, the surgeon looked in. He was a kind-hearted man, and knew their story. He said softly, "When the boy wakes I have some news for him that will do him more good than I can."

Harry, who was just waking, started and exclaimed, "What news? tell me this minute! is the money found?"

"Come, Mr. Gunpowder, keep quiet, if you please, or you'll not hear any thing from me."

"Yes, yes; I am as quiet as a lamb, only be quick. Tell me the news."

"Well, here are two letters that a great six foot chap has brought, not for your lambship, Mr. Harry, but for your good mother, who takes things like a rational being."

He gave the letters to the mother and left the tent, saying with a smile, "Don't be too happy."

The letter from the postmaster was to ask Harry's pardon for the injustice, and to offer the place in the office. "There is no one," it concluded, "I could trust as I can you."

The other was from George, as follows:—

"DEAR MR. BROWN: My neglect of my duty in directing a letter was the real cause of the suspicion that fell upon you. I can never forgive myself. I can hardly hope you can forgive me. If you will be generous enough to try to do so, you will make me less unhappy. If you accept the sum I enclose you to meet the expenses of your journey, I shall be less miserable. By taking it you will prove that you pity and forgive me,—the unintentional cause of so much evil to you and your excellent mother." George enclosed a check for five hundred dollars, all he had saved from his earnings as a clerk for the two years past.

"Thank Heaven, my innocence is proved!" said the honest fellow. "But, Mother, I don't want the money."

"It is kinder to take it," said the mother.

Harry submitted. Ere long, he was able to move on crutches. He and his mother were again in their little cottage. Harry received the heartiest welcome from his towns-people when he was seen again with his one leg in his place in the post-office.

George often went to the town. His first visit was always to Mrs. Brown. He treated her as if she were his mother, and her son was to him as a brother. He was often heard to say, "The sound of Harry Brown's crutches always reminds me sorrowfully that when there is a duty to perform involving the rights of others we should never say, It is only a trifle."

"It seems to me," said Frank, "that I should never have been happy again to have caused so much misery by the neglect of my duty; and yet, Mother, it did seem a trifle."

"My mother," replied Mrs. Chilton, "said to me, when I was a girl, Never consider any duty, ever so great, as too difficult, or any, ever so small, as too trifling. I have never forgotten her words, and though I have not always been faithful to this lesson, it has often saved me from wrong-doing and its consequent unhappiness."

After a short silence, Mrs. Chilton said to her boys, The next story is not so painful, but it illustrates the same truth—that, in matters of conscience, nothing is trifling. You shall now hear how happy a good conscience can make one even under the severest trials.

One pleasant afternoon, my friend and I were seated in the neat little room which served old Susan Vincent for parlor, kitchen, and bed-room. She was sitting in a nice arm-chair which her infirmities made necessary for her comfort. A kind friend had sent it to her. She had on a nice clean gingham gown, a handkerchief crossed on her neck, in the fashion of the Shakers, and a plain cap, as white as the driven snow, covered her silver locks. A little round table, polished by frequent scouring, stood beside her; on it was her knitting work, Baxter's Saints' Rest, and the Bible; the last lay open before her. She was reading in it when we entered. As her door was open and she did not hear very quickly, we had an opportunity of observing her before she perceived us. There was that deep interest in her manner of reading this holy book, as she was leaning over it with her spectacles on, entirely absorbed, that made her resemble a person who was examining a title deed to an estate which was to make her the heir of uncounted treasures. She was indeed reading with her whole soul the proofs she there found of her claim to an inheritance that makes all earthly riches seem poor indeed.

"I am glad to see you, dear," was her affectionate welcome to me; "do I know this lady with you?"

"No," I answered; "she is my friend whom I told you the other day I should bring to see you."

"I am glad to see her if she is your friend," she replied.

"I want you, Susan, if you are strong enough to-day, to repeat to my friend that little account of yourself that you were once kind enough to give me."

"What, the whole story?" said Susan, "beginning at the beginning, as the children say?"

Susan was silent a minute or two, as if to collect her thoughts, and then said, I have always believed, that, though it seemed strange that such a good-for-nothing creature as I am should be spared, and others taken away, that, may be, I was left to give my testimony for some good purpose, and that my experience might do some good to poor pilgrims. For

"It is a straight and thorny road,
     And mortal spirits tire and faint;
But they forget the mighty God
     Who feeds the strength of every saint."

Susan knew half the hymn book by heart, and loved to repeat hymns so well, that she could hardly have told her story without this preface. She immediately began as follows:—

"My father, who was a sailor, lost his life at sea when I was two years old; my mother never had very good health, and about six years afterward she fell into a consumption. She lived only a year after she was taken sick. I was too young to remember much of her, but I have a distinct recollection of seeing her often sitting by a little stand like this, with an open Bible upon it; and once I was struck with her looking up to heaven with her hands clasped for a long time as if she were praying, and then looking at me, and then at the book; and I saw big tears rolling down her cheeks. She called me to her, and said, with an earnest but broken voice, God save my child from the evil that is in the world! and give her the testimony of a good conscience.

These words I could not forget, for the next day she died. We forget many things in this world, ladies, but the words of a dying mother we cannot help remembering. This was the first time I had ever seen death, but there was such a peaceful, happy expression in my mother's face, that it did not seem very terrible to me, till I found they were going to carry her away; indeed, I think I must have believed it was sleep, and expected her to awake; for, when they took her from me, I was half out of my senses, and screamed for them to leave me my mother.

A kind old lady, a friend to my mother, took me in her lap and put her arms round me, and tried to soothe and comfort me. She told me my mother had gone to heaven; that it was only her body that was dead; but that her soul was living, and was gone to heaven. "She will never be sick or unhappy any more; she is gone to God, and she will live forever with Jesus Christ and all good beings."

"But I want to see her," said I.

"You will see her again, I doubt not, my child, if you are good," the old lady said. Perhaps I should not have remembered so exactly what