rm he loved, but whose virtue he despised.
Like the pagan persecutors of old, he vainly hoped, by fear or the
tinsel of gold, to win back to the world and sin the magnanimous youth
who had broken through the stronger argument of a mother's tears.
Messengers were dispatched in every direction; the police scoured the
roads for miles outside the city; friends and acquaintances were warned
not to harbor the truant.

A week passed, and no cheerful tidings came to lessen the gloom of
bereavement. That Providence which made Louis a vessel of election
had covered him with its protective shield, and bore him like a vessel
under propitious winds to the port of his destination.

In all the soft tenderness of girlhood the two sisters lamented their
absconding brother. They, too, had been unkind to him. The sweet,
patient smile that ever met their taunts, the mild reproof when they
concealed his beads or prayer-book, his willingness to oblige on all
occasions, were remembered with tears. When sitting by the mother's
bed, the conversation invariably turned on Louis. In cruel fancy
they deepened the real sorrow of separation by casting imaginary
misfortunes on the track of the absent boy. One would sigh with the
ominous PERHAPS.

"Poor Louis is now hungry!"

"Perhaps he is now lying sick and footsore on the side of some highway,
without a friend, without money."

"Perhaps he has fallen in with robbers and is stripped of the few
articles of dress he took with him."

"Perhaps he is now sorry for leaving us," sighed the tender-hearted
Aloysia, "and would give the world to kiss again his poor sick mamma!"

But futile tears flowed with each surmise. No welcome messenger
returned to bring tidings of the missing youth.

'Tis thus we love virtue; we sigh over departed worth when its
brilliancy has faded from our sight.

Chapter VIII.

Madeleine's Happy Death.

Troubles, like migratory birds, never travel alone. As heavier billows
cling together and roll in rapid succession and in thundering force
on the rock-built barriers of nature, so the waves of trial and
misfortune break on frail humanity in crushing proximity. The second
and third billows of misfortune are fast undulating on the tide of time,
and will sweep over the home of Cassier, leaving it a miserable wreck,
a theme for the sympathy and the moral of a historian's pen.

The weakened, consumptive frame of Madeleine did not long survive the
blow that Lo