e, where the neighbours knew
nothing of her past.

For twelve months there was joy in the home, and then a new life came
into it; but with the babe came a relapse; the varnish-stained man was
again at his wits' end. Once more she entered a home, for another year
he worked and toiled to pay the charges, and again he provided a new
home. And she came back to a house that he had bought for her in a new
neighbourhood; they now lived close to me, and my house was open to
them. The story of the following years cannot be told, for she almost
ruined him. Night after night after putting the children to bed, he
searched the streets and public-houses for her; sometimes I went with
him. She pawned his clothes, the children's clothing, and even the
boy's fiddle. He cleaned the house, he cooked the food, he cared for the
children, he even washed and ironed their clothing on Saturday evening
for the coming Sunday. He marked all the clothing, he warned all the
pawnbrokers. At length he obtained a separation order, but tearing it up
he again took her home with him. She went from bad to worse; even down
to the deepest depths and thence to a rescue home. He fetched her out,
and they disappeared from my neighbourhood.

So I lost them and often wondered what the end had been. To-day he
was smiling; he had with him a youth of twenty, a scholarship boy, the
violinist. He said, "I am just going to pay for his passage to Canada;
he is going to be the pioneer, and perhaps we shall all join him, she
will do better in a new country!" On further inquiry I found that she
was trying hard, and doing better than when I lost them.

Thinking she needed greater interest in life, he had bought a small
business for her, but "Mr. Holmes, she broke down!"

Alas! I knew what "breaking down" meant to the poor fellow, the heroic
fellow I ought to have said. And so for her he will leave his kindred,
home and friends; he will forsake the business that he has so slowly and
laboriously built up, he will sacrifice anything in the hope that the
air of Canada "will do her good." let us hope that it may, for her good
is all he lives for, and her good is his religion.

Twenty years of heartbreaking misery have not killed his love or
withered his hope. Surely love like his cannot fail of its reward. And
maybe in the new world he will have the happiness that has been denied
him in the old world, and in the evening of his life he may have the
peaceful calm that has hit