ne of authority.

The home-tyrant had gone a step too far. The meek, patient,
long-suffering, much enduring wife, was in no state of mind to bear
further encroachments in the direction from which they were now
coming. Suddenly she raised herself up from whence she had fallen
across the bed, and looking at her husband with an expression that
caused him to step back a pace, involuntarily answered.

"By what authority do you speak to me thus?"

"By the authority vested in me as your husband," was promptly
answered.

"I was on God's errand, Mr. Howland; searching after the weak, the
simple, and the erring! Have you anything to say against the
mission? Does your authority reach above His?"

And the mother, lifting her hand, pointed trembling finger upward,
while she fixed an eye upon her husband so steady that his own sunk
beneath its gaze.

For the space of nearly a minute, the attitude of neither changed,
nor was the silence broken. Twice during the time did Mr. Howland
lift his eyes to those of his wife, and each time did they fall,
after a few moments, under the strange half-defiant look they
encountered. At last he said firmly, yet in a more subdued, though
rebuking voice,

"This to me, Esther?"

"Am I not a mother?" was asked in response to this, yet without a
perceptible tremor in her voice.

"You are a wife, as well as a mother," replied Mr. Howland, "and, as
a wife, are under a sacred obligation to regard the authority
committed to your husband by God."

"Have I not just said to you," returned Mrs. Howland, "that I was on
God's errand? Does your authority go beyond His?"

"When did He speak to you?" There was a covert sneer in the tone
with which this half impious interrogation was made.

"I heard his still, small voice in my mother's heart," replied Mrs.
Howland, meekly, "and I went forth obedient thereto, to seek the
straying child you had so harshly and erringly turned from your
door: thus does God shut the door of Heaven against no wandering one
who comes to it and knocks for entrance."

"Esther! I will not hear such language from your lips!" There was an
unsteadiness in the voice of Mr. Howland, that marked the effect his
wife's unexpected and searching words had produced.

"Then do not seek to stand between me and my duty as a mother," was
her firm reply. "Too long, already, have you placed yourself between
me and this duty. But that time is past."

As Mrs. Howland uttered these words, she