ions.

"Be off with you," said the saloon-keeper. "You're too drunk to know
what you're talking about."

"And who made me drunk? answer that question, Jason Sillbrook," screamed
Amos.

"I'll answer nothing," said Sillbrook, and, tearing his coat from the
grasp Amos had laid upon it, he strode up the path and disappeared
within the house.

The next morning, when the superintendent made his round of the mill, he
missed one of the machine hands.

"Where's Derby?" he asked, angrily.

No one could answer his question. No one had seen Derby that day. And no
one at the mill saw him for many a day to come.

"I might have been kinder to him," thought Jane, when at last she became
convinced that her husband had in truth left her. "Perhaps I did say
more'n I should at times. Poor Amos! he was no more to blame than I was,
after all. Perhaps he would have kept out o' that saloon if I'd only
coaxed 'stead o' railing at him. He wasn't bad-hearted, an' he never
meant more'n half he said."

And as the days went by, and she forgot her past sorrows, she had only
kind thoughts of her absent husband, and blamed only herself for their
mutual misery. She wished with all her heart that she could "begin all
over again," and try the effect of kindness and forbearance on Amos.

But no such opportunity was given her, and she had little time for
bitter thoughts or unavailing regret.

The superintendent of the mill gave her eldest child, a lad of fourteen,
a situation where he could earn $4 a week, and a girl a year younger
found work in a millinery store. Thus Jane was relieved of much anxiety,
and she was so skilful with her needle that she soon found herself able
to "lay by something for a rainy day," as she expressed it.

Gradually the children were provided with comfortable clothes and were
sent to church and to Sunday-school, from which they had been debarred
for several years, owing to a lack of decent apparel; the house was
repaired, new furniture bought, a flower garden laid out in front of the
cottage, and a new fence erected. People began to speak of Jane as a
surprisingly smart woman, and to say that her husband's desertion had
been a blessing in disguise. But in spite of her prosperity there was an
ache ever at Jane's heart, and a regret which no good fortune could
stifle.

"If I'd only been kinder!" she would say to herself, as she lay awake at
night and thought of her absent husband. "It was my fault he drank; I
see th