time, displayed itself
toward his unoffending wife, and in an irritability which, ere the end
of a twelvemonth, caused his employer to dismiss him from his service.
From that time the life of poor Helen was most wretched, bitterly
reaping in tears and poverty the fruits of disobedience. From place to
place she followed her husband wherever he could obtain employ, but of
which his idle, dissolute habits soon deprived him. A constitution
naturally feeble sunk under the inroads of dissipation. Ere three
years a wife Helen became a widow. Her situation was now truly
deplorable. Without money, without friends, and thrown upon the cold
charity of the world ere yet she had reached her twentieth year. For
the sake of her innocent babe she resolved to make one more appeal to
the mercy of her father.

Over mountain ridges, through deep valleys--crossing dense forests and
treacherous rivulets--sometimes on foot, sometimes indebted to the
kindness of some chance traveler for a few miles ride, Helen at length
drew near the home of her childhood, and stole, unannounced, into the
presence of her father. The moment was propitious. Mr. Dundass had
already learned the death of his son-in-law, and the probable
destitution of his daughter. In those three years alienation from his
only child he had suffered much, and untimely old age had silvered his
temples and worn deep furrows o'er his brow. Not all his wealth, not
all the goadings of disappointed ambition, nor even the sting her
ingratitude had left, could drive her image from his heart, or check
the still small voice of conscience, which whispered that not even her
errors could excuse the harshness with which she had been repulsed.
The death of Ward seemed to unite Helen once more to him. Over her
misfortunes he shed bitter tears; and although pride still rebelled
against the yearnings of his heart, and made him resolve he would
never more admit her to his presence, yet even at the moment when she
fell fainting and exhausted at his feet, he was meditating some
measures by which he could place her and her little one above want.
Ah! pride, anger, enduring obstinacy, where are ye now? There was a
well of love in that old man's heart whose depths ye had not yet
probed. One look at the sad, care-worn face of Helen; one glance at
the innocent babe pillowed upon her breast, and that fount of love was
unsealed. The father took them to his breast and blessed them.

CHAPTER II.

A few year