“Mother! mother!” he cried with a sense of the supernatural on him, “what’s the matter?” He seized her by the arm:  he shook her.

“What is it? what do you want? where am I? what does this mean?” were questions she asked like one newly awakened.  “What are you doing here, Napoleon?”

“Eatin’.”

“Eating! what for?”

“Hungry.”

“What time is it?”

“Dunno.”

“What am I doing here?”

“Hidin’ money;” and Napoleon took a bite from his long-neglected sandwich.

“What do you mean?”

“Mean that.”

“Stop bobbing off your sentences.  Tell me what it all means.”

Napoleon stood up, laid his sandwiches on the chair, took down the sea-weeds and showed her the bills among them.

“Who put these here?”

“You.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

By this time Dr. Lively, who had been restless and excited, was awake, and down he came to the family gathering.  By dint of persistent inquiries he at length arrived at the facts in the case, and drew the inevitable conclusion that his wife had been walking in her sleep, and that to her somnambulism were to be referred the mysterious emptyings of his purse.

Mrs. Lively was mortified and subdued at being convicted of all the mischief which she had so persistently charged to her husband.  And she said this to him with her arms in a very unusual position—­that is, around her husband’s neck.

“Oh, you needn’t feel that way,” he said, choking back the quick tears.  “If you hadn’t hid that money maybe we never could have got back home.  But I’ll hide my own money, after this, while I’m awake:  I sha’n’t give you another chance to hide money in sea-weeds.  Strange, I should have snatched just those sea-weeds, and left everything else to burn!  All these things make me feel that God has been very near us.”

“Yes,” said the wife, “He has whipped me till He’s made me mind.”

The husband kissed her good-bye, for he was starting for Chicago.  Then he stepped out into the dewy morning, and hurried along the silent streets, witnesses of the crushed aspirations of the thousands who had gone out from them.  But he thought not of this.  A gorgeous Aurora was coming up the eastern heights:  his lost love was found.  He was going home:  all earth was glorified.

SARAH WINTER KELLOGG.

[Footnote 1:  While desirous of affording full scope to a talent for realistic description, we must protest against allusions bordering on personality.—­ED.]

HISTORY OF THE CRISIS.