aders that their hopes were realised, for
the old brightness and love found its way back into the home in which
sin and misery had reigned for years. Trusting no longer in their own
strength to keep the good resolutions with which they commenced the new
life, they found that He, whom they had slighted and forgotten, was not
only ready to forgive their past sin and folly, but was mighty to save
and keep them to the end of life's journey.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTE:

[B] Reprinted by permission from "The Opposite House," published by T.
Woolmer, 2 Castle Street, E.C.

[Illustration]

DOWNWARD STEPS.

"MAY the Holy Vargin an' all the blissid saints purtect us! Here's yer
father comin' up the coort as dhrunk as a pig. Get along inter hidin'
wid yer, childer!" So saying, Mrs. Ryan, who had been standing with her
baby in the doorway of her wretched home, gossiping with the neighbours,
stepped into her kitchen, and awaited the arrival of her drunken husband
with trepidation. "Maybe he'll tumble upsthairs an' slape off his
dhrops, bad cess to him for a nasthy silfish brute," she muttered.

But no, Donovan Ryan staggered into the kitchen, and greeted his wife
with an inane smile, which in no wise deceived her, taught by many an
experience, how more than likely it was that the next moment his tipsy
amiability might be exchanged for the utmost fury.

"An' what will I be gettin' for yer tay? Shure ye're home airly the
night," she tremblingly said.

"It's yersilf that's mighty oblagin' intoirely, an' hasn't Donovan Ryan,
at yer service, ma'am,"--making a low bow which nearly lost him his
unsteady balance,--"a right to kem to his own home whiniver it may plaze
him, widout askin' yer lave, ye miserable, dirthy, scoldin' broth uv a
wumman?"

Donovan had raised his voice from low, mocking accents to stentorian
tones, which shook the little room.

Poor Mrs. Ryan shrank further and further away.

"Shure, Donovan, I meant no harm at all, at all. Be aisy now; an' I'll
git ye a cup uv tay in a jiffy," she said, coaxingly.

But, according to his ideas, Donovan had received a grievous insult, and
there was only one way in which the said insult could be avenged; and,
being made of that stern, courageous stuff of which some few of our
British workmen are composed, he proceeded to teach Mrs. Ryan, in a very
practical manner, that she really must not venture to offend the
perfectly justifiable ideas which he held of