t, and it was
from the same kind friend that her resources mostly had come up to the
day when, three years after her marriage, Amy Hastings came home to die,
bringing with her a little two-year-old boy, whom, she called Harold,
for his father. Just where the father was, if indeed he were living, she
did not know. He had left her in London six months before, saying he was
going over to Paris for a few days, and should be back almost before she
had time to miss him. Just before he left her he said to her, playfully:

'Cheer up, _petite_. I have not been quite as regular in my habits as I
ought to have been, but London is not the place for a man of my
tastes--too many temptations for a fellow like me. When I come back we
will go into the country, where you can have a garden, with flowers and
chickens, and grow fat and pretty again. You are not much like the girl
I married. Good-bye.'

He kissed her and the baby, and went whistling down the stairs. She
never saw him again, and only heard from him once. Then he was in Paris,
and had decided to go for a week to Pau, where he said they were having
such fine fox hunts. Weeks went by and he never wrote nor came, and Amy
would have been utterly destitute and friendless but for Arthur Tracy,
who, when her need was greatest, went to her, telling her that he had
never been far from her, but had watched over her vigilantly to see that
no harm came to her. When her husband went to Paris he knew it through a
detective, and from the same source knew when he went to Pau, where all
trace of him had been lost.

'But we are sure to find him again,' he said, encouragingly; 'and
meantime I shall see that you do not suffer. As an old friend of your
husband, you will allow me to care for you until he is found.'

And Amy, who had no alternative, accepted his care, and tried to seem
cheerful and brave while waiting for the husband who never came back.

At last when all hope of seeing him again was gone, Arthur sent her home
to the cottage in the lane, where her mother received her gladly,
thanking Heaven that she had her daughter back again. But not for long.
Poor Amy's heart was broken. She loved her husband devotedly, and his
cruel desertion of her--for she knew now it was that--hurt her more than
years of suffering with him could have done. Occasionally she heard from
Arthur, who was still busy in search of the delinquent, and who always
sent in his letter a substantial proof of his friend