nk. Angel tried courageously to find employment, but her slender
wages were rudely taken from her, and half the time they went cold and
hungry. Little Mary had always been extremely delicate, and she sunk
under it and died, and was buried beside her mother. Angel despaired
then, and went on for the future in a kind of maze of bewilderment,
doing that which her hand found to do mechanically. Only God, who had
bereft her, pitied her still, and helped her to resist temptation when
it came to her.

"As her mother had done before her, Angel dragged out the weary years,
almost hopeless; and the one object of her toil and solicitude, was only
a pitiful wreck of the former stalwart William Way. Only a miserable,
wretched creature, that grovelled in the mire of its own degradation,
and from whose bosom the last spark of manhood seemed to have forever
fled. To look upon him, you would ask, 'Can this being have a soul?'

"And fifteen more years dragged their weary round, and Angel was thirty,
and a haggard, care-worn woman. It was a sin and a shame, people said,
to wreck that girl's life, when she had many a chance where she might
have married, and enjoyed the comfort of having a home of her own. And
there were even those mean enough to deride her for her sacrifice, and
tell her she had no ambition, and call her a fool for her pains; but she
did not mind them.

"She felt glad that she had not, when, one day, the Doctor pronounced,
over a broken limb that he was bandaging, that William Way was not long
for this world.

"'It's wonderful how he has held on so long, at the dreadful rate he has
gone on, but the last few years have told on him. He can't survive this
last shock.'

"There was but little time for preparation for a future world; but Angel
had faith, and, even at the eleventh hour, it met with its reward. When
she closed the dying eyes, she felt that she could trust the penitent
soul to the mercy of Him who created it, and 'who can make the vilest
clean.'

"For herself, she knew that 'when time shall be no more,' she should
find eternal peace."

There was a quick, gasping sob, and Clemence looked up, as she finished,
to see a little figure in faded blue calico, flying frantically down the
road.

"Which of the scholars left?" she asked.

"Only Ruth Lynn," said Maurice Wayne. "_Her_ father used to drink, and
fell in the mill pond about a year ago, and got drowned. Her mother's
sick, too, and Dr. Little says she can