in the worst part of the town. The wife, still young, but apparently worn out with trouble and anxiety, looked even more miserable than Barton himself. And the children! Frank could scarcely realise the fact, when he learned that the eldest boy, a poor, miserable child, with a drooping figure and a halfstarved look upon his face, was the same age as his own sturdy Robert! and that the eldest girl, who, though supposed to be quite well, looked to him as though she were in a consumption, was a whole year older than Mary! She certainly was not so tall as Susan; and then, she was so miserably thin! The father remarked Frank's look of compassion, and observed that “they had been a good while at sea, and shipboard was a bad place for children.” But there was something in their looks which spoke to Frank still more plainly of long want of food and suffering than it did of shipboard. Frank was more and more struck with the change in Barton. He was willing to do anything; and as he wrote a good hand, it was settled that he should at once begin as a clerk in Frank Elston's business; and Frank promised him higher wages than he would have given to a man whom he had not known in early days, and who had not a wife and five children to maintain. He also engaged a lodging for them in a healthy part of the town, and Ruth became poor Mrs. Barton's constant visitor. Through her means, the

children were tidily dressed and sent to school; and it was she who first introduced principles of neatness and order into the house, and taught the mother to take pleasure in seeing her children neatly dressed and well-behaved.

CHAPTER XXXII.

"But be this

Even as it may-from all that hath been lost,
And all that yet remains, our hearts may learn
Some profitable lessons."

REV. J. MOUltrie.

"I WANT to speak to you about something this morning," said Stephen Barton to Mr. Elston, as he met him one day in the office. "There is a long time I have suspected it, but now I know it's true. I've been to the doctor this morning, and put the plain question to him, and told him I wanted a plain answer to it, and he has given it to me. I am a dying man, Frank Elston."

Frank started; for though he could see that Barton was thoroughly out of health, he had no idea of the kind, and had always attributed his worn and pallid looks to want of proper nourishment and past suffering, rather than to any active disease. He started when Stephen said these words, but Barton went on quite quietly: "Don't distress

yourself. There's nothing to startle you in what I say. I have as good as known it a long time, ever since I have had this hacking cough and dreadful weakness, and this aching pain in my side. I watched my father in a consumption, and I know I am going like him-only, maybe, faster. Now, Frank Elston, there is a long time I have had it on my mind to speak to you. But I have waited until I should have heard from the doctor's lips what I have heard to-day, that I am a dying man. There was a time I could not have talked about it as I do The thought of it alone would have driven me wild; but that time is gone, thank God for it, and after God I thank you, Frank Elston."

now.

"Me!" exclaimed Frank.

"Yes, you!" replied Barton. "I never cared for religion. I never even so much as thought about it, until I got that accident on the Ordley line, and lay near dying with the thought on my mind of the harm I had done to you. I was frightened then, and wondered what would become of me if I were to die, as it seemed most likely I should. And then you came, and spoke so solemnly about God's forgiveness; and I thought I should like to get it, and prayed for it, and resolved, if I got well, to live differently. But when I did get well, somehow or other, my good thoughts seemed to leave me. My old uncle died, as you know, after a very short

illness, and all the money came to me, without my having had to work for it, as I expected; and I resolved to live a jolly life on it. So I married the prettiest-looking girl I could meet with, and we set up in style. But riches, they say, make to themselves wings, and I think ours flew faster than others. We got into debt, had to sell our property, little by little, until there was scarcely any left. And then we emigrated. I can't tell you the life we led out there. It would take too long, and be more than I should have strength to tell, or you would have time to hear. But it was a wearying business. My wife lost her health; the climate did not agree with her, and she reproached me bitterly. I had promised to make a lady of her, and had brought her to misery and poverty! The children were born one after the other; but they never seemed to be any pleasure to either of us, for, as we said, they were only born to trouble and poverty. And then my father fell into a decline. It was then I came to think differently. The parson came to see him- he was a good, pious man, and went about continually amongst the people— and I heard him tell him, that though he must die in this world, he must live again, and live for ever in the world to come. My father heard what the doctor said, and he heard what the parson said. But whether he believed either of them or not, I