eyes
to look at him as he came into his presence.

For awhile Andrew lingered in the room where his father sat reading,
hoping for a word that would indicate a kinder state of feeling
toward him. But no such word was uttered. At length he commenced
playing with a younger brother, who, not being able to make him do
just as he wished, screamed out some complaint against him, when Mr.
Howland looked up, suddenly, with a lowering countenance, and said,
harshly--

"Go out of the room, sir! I never saw such a boy! No one can have
any peace where you are!"

Andrew started, and made an effort to explain and excuse himself,
for he was very anxious not to be misunderstood again just at this
time. But his father exclaimed, more severely than at first.

"Do you hear me, sir! Leave this room instantly!"

The boy went out hopeless. He felt that he was unloved by his
father. Oh! what would he not have given--what sacrifice would he
not have made--to secure a word and a smile of affection from his
stern parent, whom he had known from childhood only as one who
reproved and punished.

CHAPTER IV.

WRONGED and repelled, Andrew left the presence of his father, sad,
hopeless, yet with a sense of indignation in his heart against that
father for the wrong he had suffered at his hands.

"It's no use for me to try to do right," he murmured to himself. "If
I want to be good, they won't let me."

As these thoughts passed through his mind, a feeling of recklessness
came over him, and he said aloud--

"I don't care what I do!"

"Don't you, indeed?"

The voice that uttered this sentence caused him to start. It was the
voice of his father, who had left his room soon after the expulsion
of Andrew, and was at the moment passing near, unobserved by the
boy.

"Don't care what you do, ha!" repeated Mr. Howland, standing in
front of the lad, and looking him sternly in the face. "You've
spoken the truth for once!"

For nearly a minute Mr. Howland stood with contracted brows,
scowling upon the half-frightened child. He then walked away, deeply
troubled and perplexed in his mind.

"What is to become of this boy?" he said to himself. "He really
seems to be one of those whom Satan designs to have, that he might
sift them as wheat. I sadly fear that he is given over to a hard
heart, and a perverse mind--one predestinated, to evil from his
birth. Ah me! Have I not done, and am I not still doing everything
to restrain him and save hi