d, more than she knew, God's work of grace in him.

"Did you tell the poor creetur?" she asked.

Stephen shook his head, and told her of poor Mrs Morely's illness, and
of all that had been happening at the little log-house during the days
of the storm. "It seemed as though it was more than she could bear to
hear: so I told her what he said to me the other night, and nothing at
all of to-day."

They were both silent for a while, thinking. It was a great
responsibility for them to take thus to conceal Morely's situation from
his wife, for it might be that he was in real danger. But it was not of
this they were thinking. Even if he were not in danger--if, after a few
days' nursing, they were able to send him to Montreal as though nothing
had happened--their troubles would not be at an end.

For they were very poor people. By the utmost economy they had been
able, during the last five years, to buy and pay for the little house in
which they lived; but they had nothing laid up for the future; and now
that Littleton was growing to be a place of some importance, as the new
railway was nearly completed to it, there were new shops of all kinds to
be opened in it, and Stephen's business would be interfered with; for he
could not make good boots and shoes as cheaply as other people could buy
and sell poor ones, and his custom was dropping off. It would all come
right in the end, he told Dolly; but in the meantime a hard winter might
lie before them.

CHAPTER FIVE.

WORKING AND WAITING.

So, as they sat there in silence, Dolly was thinking with some anxiety
that they were making themselves responsible for all the food needed in
the little log-house for the next two months at least, and Stephen was
thinking the same. Dolly could see no possible way of doing this
without putting themselves in debt, and there were few things that Dolly
dreaded more. Stephen saw his way clear without the debt, but it was a
way almost as much to be regretted as the running up of a long bill at
Smith's would be. The little sum that he had collected with much
effort, and kept with much self-denial, which was to purchase a supply
of leather at the cheapest market in Montreal, must be appropriated to
another purpose, for nothing but ready money would do now. Morely's
expenses must be paid to Montreal, and, indeed, in Montreal till he
could get employment; and the children must in the meantime be cared for
as well; and therefore Stephen