linton, for his were the only love-words that ever were breathed
into her ear, and she was sure that if Clinton's was the language of
love, Arthur's was that of friendship only. Perhaps her silence chilled,
it certainly hushed the expression of his thoughts, for he spoke not
till they reached the threshold of her home. The bright light gleaming
through the blinds, showed them how dark it had grown abroad since they
left Miss Thusa's cottage. Helen was conscious then how very slowly they
must have walked.

"Thank you," said she, releasing herself from the sheltering folds that
had enveloped her. "Hark!" she suddenly exclaimed, "whose voice is that
I hear within? It is--it must be Louis. Dear, dear Louis!--so long
absent!--so anxiously looked for!"

Even in that moment of joy, while bounding over the threshold with the
fleetness of a fawn, the dreaded form of Clinton rose before the eye of
her imagination, and arrested for a moment her flying steps. Again she
heard the voice of Louis, and Clinton was forgotten.

CHAPTER XI.

"Go, sin no more! Thy penance o'er,
A new and better life begin!
God maketh thee forever free
From the dominion of thy sin!
Go, sin no more! He will restore
The peace that filled thy heart before,
And pardon thine iniquity."--_Longfellow._

"I am glad you came _alone_, brother," cried Helen, when, after the
supper was over, they all drew around the blazing hearth. Louis turned
abruptly towards her, and as the strong firelight fell full upon his
face, she was shocked even more than at first, with his altered
appearance. The bloom, the brightness, the joyousness of youth were
gone, leaving in their stead, paleness, and dimness, and gloom. He
looked several years older than when he left home, but his was not the
maturity of the flower, but its premature wilting. There was a worm in
the calyx, preying on the vitality of the blossom, and withering up its
beauty.

Yes! Louis had been feeding on the husks of dissipation, though in his
father's house there was food enough and to spare. He had been selling
his immortal birth-right for that which man has in common with the
brutes that perish, and the reptiles that crawl in the dust. Slowly,
reluctantly at first, had he stepped into the downward path, looking
back with agonies of remorse to the smooth, green, flowery plains he had
left behind, striving to return, but driven forward by the gravitating
power of sin. Th