change in the man of iron. His tall,
erect form seemed to shrink downward; his head bent toward his
bosom, and the harsh lines on his brow and around his less tightly
closed lips grew softer. His indignation against Edward was so
great, when he finally comprehended the character of the
transactions in which he had been engaged, involving as they did a
total absence of integrity, that he turned his back upon him
angrily, saying, as he did so--

"Never come into my presence again, until you come an honest man!"

On the day after this utterance of the father's indignant feelings,
Edward left the city; and it was the opinion of many that he went
with a pocket full of money. They were not far wrong.

Thus, of all his children, only the youngest remained with Mr.
Howland. All the rest were estranged from him; and in spite of all
his efforts to push the conviction from his mind, he could not help
feeling that he was to blame for the estrangement.

CHAPTER XI.

NEARLY eight years from the time Andrew Howland left his home have
passed, and we now bring him before the reader as a discharged
United States' dragoon, having just concluded a five years' service
in the far West. He had enlisted, rather than steal, at a time when
he found it impossible to obtain employment, and had gone through
the hard and humiliating service of a trooper on our extreme
frontier, under an assumed name, omitting to write home during the
entire period, lest by any chance a knowledge of his position might
be communicated to his mother, and (her memory had never faded) to
Emily Winters. The images of these two, the only ones he loved in
the world, were green in his bosom. They were drawing him homeward
with a force of attraction that grew stronger and stronger as the
end of his service approached. Nearly three years had elapsed since
he had met any one recently from the East who was able to answer,
satisfactorily, the few inquiries he ventured to make; and now he
was all impatience to return.

Steadily, for a long time, had the young man looked forward to this
period; and in order to have the means of effecting a thorough
change in his external appearance, and to be able to support himself
after his return East, until he obtained some kind of employment, he
had left nearly all his pay in the hands of the disbursing officer.
It now amounted to nearly two hundred dollars.

It was in Santa Fe that Andrew obtained his discharge from the
Uni