ildren?" he asks, surprise and admiration mingling
in his tones.

"All ours, and, thank God, the little flock is yet unbroken."

The stranger averts his face. He is disturbed by emotions that it is
impossible to conceal.

"Contentment is better than wealth," he murmurs. "Oh that I had
comprehended the truth."

The words were not meant for others; but the utterance had been too
distinct. They have reached the ears of Robert, who instantly recognises
in the stranger his long-wandering, long-mourned brother.

"William!"

The stranger is on his feet. A moment or two the brothers stand gazing
at each other, then tenderly embrace.

"William!"

How the stranger starts and trembles! He had not seen, in the quiet
maiden, moving among and ministering to the children so unobtrusively,
the one he had parted from years before--the one to whom he had been so
false. But her voice has startled his ears with the familiar tones of
yesterday.

"Ellen!" Here is an instant oblivion of all the intervening years. He
has leaped back over the gulf, and stands now as he stood ere ambition
and lust for gold lured him away from the side of his first and only
love. It is well both for him and the faithful maiden that he cannot so
forget the past as to take her in his arms and clasp her almost wildly
to his heart. But for this, conscious shame would have betrayed his
deeply-repented perfidy.

And here we leave them, reader. "Contentment is better than wealth."
So the worldling proved, after a bitter experience, which may you be
spared! It is far better to realize a truth perceptibly, and thence make
it a rule of action, than to prove its verity in a life of sharp agony.
But how few are able to rise into such a realization!

RAINBOWS EVERYWHERE.

BENDING over a steamer's side, a face looked down into the clear, green
depths of Lake Erie, where the early moonbeams were showering rainbows
through the dancing spray, and chasing the white-crusted waves with
serpents of gold. The face was clouded with thought, a shade too sombre,
yet there glowed over it something like a reflection from the iris-hues
beneath. A voice of using was borne away into the purple and vermilion
haze that twilight began to fold over the bosom of the lake.

"Rainbows! Ye follow me everywhere! Gloriously your arches arose from
the horizon of the prairies, when the storm-king and the god of day met
within them to proclaim a treaty and an alliance. You spann