True to her promise, Margaret came to attend her stepmother’s funeral.  Walter accompanied her, and shuddered as he looked on the face of one who had so darkened his home, and embittered his life.  Kate was not there, and when, after the burial, Lenora asked Margaret for her, she was told of a little “Carrie Lenora,” who with pardonable pride “Walter thought was the only baby of any consequence in the world.  Margaret was going on with a glowing description of the babe’s many beauties, when she was interrupted by Lenora, who laid her face in her lap and burst into tears.

“Why, Lenora, what is the matter?” asked Margaret.

As soon as Lenora became calm, she answered, “That name, Maggie.  You have given my name to Walter Hamilton’s child, and if you had hated me you would never have done it.”

“Hated you!” repeated Margaret; “we do not hate you; now that we understand you, we like you very much, and one of Kate’s last injunctions to Walter was that he should again offer you a home with him.”

Once more Lenora was weeping.  She had not shed a tear when they carried from sight her mother, but words of kindness touched her heart, and the fountain was opened.  At last, drying her eyes, she said, “I prefer to go with father.  Walter will, of course, come back to the homestead, while father and I shall return to our old home in Connecticut, where, by being kind to him, I hope to atone, in a measure, for my great unkindness to mother.”

CHAPTER XIV.

FINALE.

Through the open casement of a small, white cottage in the village of P——­, the rays of the September moon are stealing, disclosing to view a gray-haired man, whose placid face still shows marks of long years of dissipation.  Affectionately he caresses the black, curly head which is resting on his knee, and softly he says, “Lenora, my daughter, there are, I trust, years of happiness in store for us both.”

“I hope it may be so,” was the answer, “but there is no promise of many days to any save those who honor their father and mother.  This last I have never done, though many, many times have I repented of it, and I begin to be assured that we may be happy yet.”

* * * * *

Away to the westward, over many miles of woodland, valley, and hill, the same September moon shines upon the white walls of the “homestead,” where sits the owner, Walter Hamilton, gazing first upon his wife and then upon the tiny treasure which lies sleeping upon her lap.

“We are very happy, Katy darling,” he says, and the affection which looks from her large blue eyes as she lifts them to his face is a sufficient answer.  Margaret, too, is there, and though but an hour ago her tears were falling upon the grass-grown graves where slept her father and mother, the gentle Carrie, and golden-haired Willie, they are all gone now, and she responds to her brother’s words, “Yes, Walter, we are very happy.”