, turned so constantly
toward his fair companion. They were deeply, legibly written there,
those black nights, when he would dash out into the hall, determined
to break through the windows of the nearest dram shop and drink,
drink, drink, until the red liquor burst from his eyes, his mouth, his
nostrils! Those ghastly nights, when Carmen would stand before him,
her arms outspread across the door, and beat back the roaring devils
within him! Those long days of agonized desire for the vicious drug
which had sapped his manhood! Those fell hours, when low curses poured
from his burning lips upon her and upon all mankind! Those cold,
freezing sweats, and the dry, cracking fever! Those hours when, with
Carmen always by his side, he tramped mile after mile through drifts
and ice, until he dropped at length from sheer exhaustion, only to
awake, hours later, to find that the girl had brought him home, safe,
unharmed!--

And then, oh, the "Peace, be still!" which he began to hear, faint at
first, but growing in volume, until, at last, it became a mighty,
thunderous command, before which the demons paled and slunk away,
never to return! Oh, the tears of agony that had given way to tears of
joy, of thanksgiving! Oh, the weakness that had been his strength!
And, oh, the devotion of this fair girl--aye, and of her associates,
too--but all through her! Had she proved her God before the eyes of
the world? That she had! Day after day, clad in the impenetrable armor
of her love, she had stood at this struggling lad's side, meeting the
arrows of death with her shield of truth! Night after night she had
sat by his couch, her hand crushed in his desperate grasp, flouting
the terror that stalked before his delirious gaze! What work she had
done in those long weeks, none would ever know; but the boy himself
knew that he had emerged from the valley of the shadow of death with a
new mind, and that she had walked with him all the dark, cloud-hung
way.

As they sat there in the bright sunlight that morning, their thought
was busy with the boy's future. Old plans, old ambitions, had seemed
to lift with the lifting of the mortal curse which had rested upon
him, and upward through the ashes of the past a tender flower of hope
was pushing its way. He was now in a new world. The last tie which
bound him to his family had been severed by his own father two weeks
before, when the shadow of death fell athwart his mother's brilliant
path. Mrs. J. Wilto