to end?" was his shuddering
ejaculation, as the imminent peril of his position most vividly
presented itself.

How hopelessly he wended his reluctant way homeward! There was nothing
to lean upon there. No strength of ever-enduring love, to be, as it
were, a second self to him in his weakness. No outstretched arm to drag
him, with something of super-human power, out of the miry pit into
which he had fallen; but, instead, an indignant hand to thrust him
farther in.

"God help me!" he sighed, in the very bitterness of a hopeless spirit;
"for there is no aid in man."

Ah! if, in his weakness, he had only leaned, in true dependence, on Him
he thus asked to help him; if he had but resisted the motions of evil
in himself, as sins against his Maker, and resisted them in a
determined spirit, he need not have fallen; strength would, assuredly,
have been given.

The nearer Ellis drew to his home, the more unhappy he felt at the
thought of meeting his wife. After having left the house without seeing
her in the morning, and then remaining from home all day, he had no
hope of a kind reception.

"It's no use!" he muttered to himself, stopping suddenly, when within a
square of his house. "I can't meet Cara; she will look coldly at me, or
frown, or speak cutting words; and I'm in no state of mind to bear any
thing patiently just now. I've done wrong, I know--very wrong; but I
don't want it thrown into my face. Oh, dear! I am beset within and
without, behind and before and there is little hope for me."

Overcoming this state of indecision, Ellis forced himself to go home.
On entering the presence of his wife, he made a strong effort to
compose himself, and, when he met Cara, he spoke to her in a cheerful
tone of voice. How great an effort it cost him to do this, considering
all the circumstances by which he was surrounded, the reader may easily
imagine. And what was his reception?

"Found your way home at last!"

These were the words with which Cara received her husband; and they
were spoken in a sharp, deriding tone of voice. The day's doubt,
suspense, and suffering, had not quieted the evil spirit in her heart.
She was angry with her husband, and could not restrain its expression.

A bitter retort trembled on the tongue of Ellis; but he checked its
utterance, and, turning from his wife, took one of his children in his
arms. The sphere of innocence that surrounded the spirit of that child
penetrated his heart, and touched hi