ng been, Mrs. Carson returned to the
kitchen. As she looked on the last ember dying out on the hearth, a
feeling of frenzy shook her frame. Andrew would soon return, shivering
with cold, and she had no fire to warm him--no money to purchase fire.
She thought of the wealthy--of their bright fires--and bitter envy and
longing for riches gnawed her very heart and life. A broken deal chair
was in a corner of the kitchen; she seized it, and after some efforts
succeeded in wrenching off a piece, which she placed on the dying ember,
and busied herself for some time in fanning; then she gathered every
remaining fragment of coals from the recess at one side of the
fire-place, in which they were usually kept, and with the pains and
patience which poverty so sorely teaches, she employed herself in making
some appearance of a fire. Had she been in her usual mood, she would
have sat anathematizing her son for his absence at such an hour; but now
every moment, as she sat awaiting his return, her heart became more
kindly disposed toward him, and an uneasy feeling of remorse for her
past life was each instant gaining strength amidst the variety of
strange spectral thoughts and fancies which flitted through her diseased
mind. At some moments she fancied she saw her father seated opposite to
her on the hearth, and heard him reading from the Bible, as he did so
often in her girlish days: then again he was away in the privacy of his
own room, and she was watching him through a crevice of the door, and
she saw him open the cabinet he kept there, and take out liquor, ardent
spirits, and he drank long and deep draughts, until gradually he sank
down on his bed in the silent, moveless state of intoxication which had
so long imposed on her, for she had once believed that her father was
subject to fits of a peculiar kind. She groaned and shuddered as this
vision was impressed on her; she saw the spirit of evil which had
destroyed her father attaching itself next to her own fate, and leading
her into the depths of guilt, and she trembled for her son. Had he now
fallen in sin? was some evil action detaining him to such an hour? He
was naturally inclined to good, she knew--strangely good and pure had
his life been, considering he was her child, and reared so carelessly as
she had reared him; but now he had been urged to despair by her endless
cry for money, and, perhaps, he was at that very instant engaged in some
robbery, by which he would be able to