ion, and his heart shrunk with shame and trembled with dismay.

"Henry," said the uncle, after an hour's conversation with his sister
and Edith, "I would like to talk with you alone."

Mrs. Darlington and her daughters left the room.

"Henry," said Mr. Ellis, as soon as the rest had withdrawn, "you are
old enough to do something to help on. All the burden ought not to come
on Edith and Miriam."

"Only show me what I can do, uncle, and I am ready to put my hands to
the work," was Henry's prompt reply.

"It will be years before you can expect an income from your profession."

"I know, I know. That is what discourages me."

"I can get you the place of clerk in an insurance office, at a salary
of five hundred dollars a year. Will you accept it?"

"Gladly!" The face of the young man brightened as if the sun had shone
upon it suddenly.

"You will have several hours each day, in which to continue your law
reading, and will get admitted to the bar early enough. Keep your
mother and sisters for two or three years, and then they will be in a
condition to sustain you until you make a practice in your profession."

But to this the mother and sisters, when it was mentioned to them,
objected. They were not willing to have Henry's professional studies
interrupted. That would be a great wrong to him.

"Not a great wrong, but a great good," answered Mr. Ellis. "And I will
make this plain to you. Henry, as I learn from yourself, has made some
dangerous associations; and some important change is needed to help him
break away from them. No sphere of life is so safe for a young man as
that which surrounds profitable industry pursued for an end. Temptation
rarely finds its way within this sphere. Two or three years devoted to
the duties of a clerk, with the end of aiding in the support of his
mother and sisters, will do more to give a right direction to Henry's
character--more to make success in after life certain--than any thing
else possible now to be done. The office in which I can get him the
situation I speak of adjoins the one to which I am attached, and I
will, therefore, have him mostly under my own eye. In this new school,
the ardency of his young feelings will be duly chastened, and his
thoughts turned more into elements of usefulness. In a word, sister, it
will give him self-dependence, and, in the end, make a man of him."

The force of all this, and more by this suggested, was not only seen,
but felt, by Mrs. Darling