that it is necessary for you to be away, yet you understood my terms and accepted them. Mary, this must not happen again."

"Then I must leave your employ, Mrs. Thorpe."

"Very well," replied the mistress, a red spot burning on either cheek; "I shall find someone else as soon as possible."

After supper Mrs. McGowan again left the parsonage and hurried along the street until she came to a small house a few blocks away.

"Why, mother mine, home so soon?" said a tall, dark-faced girl, as the mother entered the room. "What is it, mother? You look tired and worn. Is the work too hard for you?" The girl drew a stool to her mother's side and took a worn hand in hers. "I feel so badly to have you working so hard for me, mother, but when I finish school, oh, you shall be a lady then, mother! I shall take care of you and Jamie then."

The mother laid her tired head back against the chair and waited long before she replied. She felt faint and sick at heart. She had seen much in life that was hard to bear; widowhood and poverty had been hers for many years. Her only boy was a helpless cripple. Her one joy in life was Margaret, her blithesome girl. Her one great aim had been to keep her in school until she should obtain sufficient education to place her independently among the world's workers.

When she took her place at the parsonage, it was with the expectation that Mr. Thorpe, who knew her circumstances and seemed interested in her family, would be willing for her to spend what time she could spare from her duties in her own home. But now she saw that this could not be, and there was nothing left but for Margaret to go into the factory. It was a bitter blow, but deeper and keener than her own pain, she felt what it would mean to the girl. Margaret, with her willful, passionate nature, had not learned to be patient, nor to bow to the inevitable, as she, the mother, had learned to do.

"What is it, mother?" persisted the girl. "What troubles you?"

"Lassie, I cannot work for Mrs. Thorpe any longer."

Margaret sprang to her feet and stood like a young deer, with head erect and dilated nostrils.

"Mother, what has happened? Tell me what has happened."

"It is nothing, lass, nothing at all, only Mrs. Thorpe must have someone who can spend all her time at the parsonage. She does not know how often I have been away, nor that I have spent the nights here with you and Jamie. She was displeased to-day when she found me gone."

Disappointment keen and sharp, anger wild and unreasoning, met in the girl's heart. Passionate, turbulent Margaret!

"Come, lassie, don't take it so hard; we can find some other way after a time, perhaps."

"Yes, mother, you can go to the pastor again with your trouble. You believed him to be so good a man. Good!--how I hate, hate and detest good people! They talk of helping the poor and needy--we have been poor, mother, poor and in need ever since I can remember--many times we have been hungry, and Jamie has never had the help that he should have had--else he might now be strong as other boys; and what have these good people of the church done for us? This man, your pious pastor, came here and offered you this place, and now his wife, the detestable hypocrite, has turned you off. Good people! Oh, I wish some great wave would sweep them from the face of the earth!"

"Margaret, Margaret, girl, this is terrible; you must not, Margaret!"

"Yes, mother, it is terrible; terrible for me to say what I think, but you know it is true. Those people have been good to your face; they have talked and sympathized, but what has anyone of them done for us? Not one of them would lift a finger or go one step out of his way to help us."

The girl's face was transformed with passion, and there was a glitter in her eyes that even the mother had never seen before.

"There is Amy Mayhew, the deacon's daughter," the girl continued, "who spends more for ribbons and rings and bracelets than my whole wardrobe costs. To-day at school she was showing a new ring; it cost only ten dollars, and while she was saying it her eyes were on my ragged shoes--oh, mother!" With a flood of tears the girl buried her face in her mother's lap. Poor Margaret, she had not yet learned to look with unthinking, unheeding vision on the wrongs of humanity, her own included. Little more than a child, she had looked at life with a child's vision, and wrong, to her, had been wrong, and right was right. The distribution of property that gives one person more than enough and another less than sufficient, can never seem just to a mind unbiased by worldly wisdom. And when once the exact balance between right and wrong is disturbed, the equilibrium lost, a sort of moral chaos is likely to disturb all questions of righteousness and honor.

The mother laid her hand on the girl's crown of dark hair. She could not know--mercifully could not know--of the transformation taking place in the heart of her child. She well knew that many temptations lay in the girl's pathway; and Margaret had not always been tractable and easily controlled. Exuberant of spirit and naturally willful, a sort of restlessness seemed to possess her. But the mother believed that a few years more would tide her child over this trying time, and her one great desire was to get her away from the town, and engaged in some active, responsible work. And while the failure of her plans had bitterly disappointed the daughter, it had all but broken the mother's heart.

Had no thoughts come to Margaret other than those of the disappointment and uncongenial toil, she might still have retained her crown of womanhood unsullied--but alas, and alas! Beside the factory and the honest toil that her willful heart rebelled against, there arose in her mind forms and phantoms of many shapes and colors, tempting, taunting, alluring; and when her untutored mind endeavored to grasp their significance, they evaded her, and with seductive wiles eluded her. Poor girl! tempted by the sparkle of the foam on the cup. And while her heart was sore she sipped the first draught of the poison wine; and later she found, as all who taste must find, that the dregs were more bitter than anything that unsullied girlhood can conceive.

The next morning Mrs. McGowan was not able to leave her bed. A sleepless night, and the care and perplexities that multiplied ahead of her, left her nervous and exhausted. At her earnest request Margaret went to the parsonage and prepared the morning meal.

"Good morning, Margaret, I am glad to see you," said Mr. Thorpe, pleasantly. "I am sorry your mother is ill."

Mrs. Thorpe thought the girl's dark face very sullen and unattractive, and she wondered how even her husband could be kind and patient with people who seemed to care so little for his interest in them.

After Margaret had served the meal, and had left the room, Mr. Thorpe asked his wife what she knew about Mary's illness.

"Mary gave me warning yesterday that she must leave my service, but made no mention of feeling indisposed," Mrs. Thorpe replied. "She gave me to understand that she could not give me all her time. I was not aware that she has a family."

"Then you do not know about the little cripple boy?"