ore wretched than she did at the
moment of her mother's death. Nothing now remained to her in life but
the performance of stern, rigid duty. Two or three years passed by,
and one by one her charges departed from her. One brother was placed
with a farmer, and the others were apprenticed to good trades. The
little white-headed Willie, who at his mother's death was a tiny,
roly-poly prattler, only two years old, was becoming a slender, tall
youth. Lizzie felt proud as she looked at her crowd of tall boys, when
once or twice a year they would assemble at home; and on a Sunday's
afternoon, at twilight, on her way to the evening meeting, she would
steal down into the quiet church-yard, and kneeling beside her
mother's grave, ask, with streaming eyes, if she had not done well.
Such moments were fraught with bitter anguish; but a heavenly peace
would descend on her, and she said her trials, after the agony was
over, seemed lighter to bear.

"But I was blessed in one thing, dear Miss Enna," she would exclaim,
"not one of those darling boys was taken from me, and all bid fair to
turn out well. God surely smiled on the motherless, and gave me
strength to perform my labor of love."

At last there moved to the village a woman of the name of Pierce; she
opened a little milliner's shop, and soon made herself busy with the
affairs of others, as well as her own, becoming quite a considerable
person amongst the villagers. She was a widow with two or three
children--a girl or two, and a boy--little things. She was a stout,
healthy, good-looking woman, "rising forty," with a clear, shrill
voice, and good, bright black eyes in her head. She soon steadied
these bonnie eyes at the widower, Lizzie's father, and not in vain;
for after hailing him industriously, as he passed the door of her
shop, with questions about the weather, or the crops, he at last
managed to stop without the hailing; and after a short courtship
brought her and her children to his own home. How Lizzie rejoiced that
her brothers were now all out of the way. Her last pet, Willie, had, a
few months previous to the new marriage, been sent to a printer in the
neighboring city. She never thought of herself, but commenced with
redoubled industry to assist in taking care of the new family. But her
constant industry and thrifty habits were a silent reproach to the
step-mother, I fancy, for she left no stone unturned to rid herself
of the troublesome grown up daughter. She tried e