ving the gate open,
and letting a cow into a small yard of shrivelled, stinted looking
cabbages.

The children scampered for the house, with terrified looks,
whispering, "father has come," and crouching down in a heap in one
corner of the room, remained very quiet; the old cow ran for the
street, with Mr. Benson at her heels, storming furiously, and plying a
large stick across her back, which he had picked up in his rage.

The sisters placed the large bundle of dried apple in as secure a
place as possible, and returned to the kitchen.

The door was burst violently open, and Mr. Benson entered the room,
exclaiming, as he did so,

"What in thunder is going on here?"

And he proceeded to disarrange chairs, tables and everything that
came in his way, till the house was all in confusion. He went to the
cupboard, that stood in the corner of the room, to get a large jug he
used to keep brandy in, in his better days, but which now was often
filled with New England rum. Not finding it, he almost screamed,

"Hannah, you Jezebel, where is my jug?"

"I thought I would sell it, as you were boarding out."

"Woman," shouted he, "that shall be a dear jug to you."

"It has been that already."

The enraged husband cast at her the look of a fiend, and passed on to
the adjoining room, which was calculated to be an elegant parlor when
the house was raised, but which was now converted into a store room,
for old barrels, old baskets, old hats and bonnets, and, in fine,
a great variety of old things. In one corner stood a little old
bedstead, with an old flock bed, covered with patched sheets and a
ragged quilt, where James slept. The loom was in that room and the
spinning wheels; an old churn and many other things, too numerous to
mention.

Mr. Benson reached up his hand, to take down a large bunch of woolen
yarn that hung suspended on a nail. His wife sprang forward, saying,
"Do not touch that--it is not mine."

"I don't care whose it is. I must and will have something that will
sell."

At that moment, seeing the package of dried apple, he pounced upon
it, like a tiger upon its prey, and bore it rapidly away, with the
remonstrances of a weeping wife ringing in his ears.

And the traffickers in human souls bought it at a price, paid him in
liquid fire, and he returned to his home, more fiend than when he left
it. The wife's dress was gone; the comfortable things she hoped to
procure for the children were gone. She sat up an