‘You are vexing about the Union,’ said Mrs. King, without answering this last speech, or she knew that she should begin to cry herself.

‘I did think I’d done with them,’ said Paul, with another sob.  ’I said I’d never set foot in those four walls again!  I was proud, maybe; but please don’t stop with me!  If you wouldn’t look and speak like that, the place wouldn’t seem so hard, seeing I’m bred to it, as they say;’ and he made an odd sort of attempt to laugh, which ended in his choking himself with worse tears.

‘Harold is not gone yet,’ said Mrs. King soothingly; ’we’ll wait till he comes in from his work, and see how you are, when you’ve had a little sleep.  Don’t cry; you aren’t going just yet.’

That same earnest questioning glance, but with more hope in it, was turned on her again; but she did not dare to bind herself, much as she longed to take the wanderer to her home.  She went on to her son’s room.

‘Mother, Mother,’ Alfred cried in a whisper, so eager that it made him cough, ‘you can’t never send him to the workhouse?’

‘I can’t bear the thought, Alfy,’ she said, the tears in her eyes; ’but I don’t know what to do.  It’s not the trouble.  That I’d take with all my heart, but it is hard enough to live, and—­’

‘I’m sure,’ said Ellen, coming close, that her undertone might be heard, ‘Harold and I would never mind how much we were pinched.’

‘And I could go without—­some things,’ began Alfred.

‘And then,’ went on the mother, ’you see, if we got straitened, and Matilda found it out, she’d want to help, and I can’t have her savings touched; and yet I can’t bear to let that poor lad be sent off, so ill as he is, and after all he’s done for Harold—­such a good boy, too, and one that’s so thankful for a common kind word.’

‘O Mother, keep him!’ said Alfred; ’don’t you know how the Psalm says, “God careth for the stranger, and provideth for the fatherless and the widow"?’

Mrs. King almost smiled.  ’Yes, Alf, I think it would be trusting God’s word; but then there’s my duty to you.’

‘You’ve not sent Harold off for the cart?’ said Alfred.

’No; I thought somehow, we have enough for to-day; and it goes against me to send him away at once.  I thought we’d wait to see how it is to-morrow; and Harold won’t mind having a bed made up in the kitchen.’

Tap, tap, on the counter.  Some one had come in while they were talking.  It was Mr. Cope, very anxious to hear the truth of the strange stories that were going about the place.  Ellen and Alfred thought it very tiresome that he was so long in coming up-stairs; but the fact was, that their mother was very glad to talk the matter over without them.  She knew indeed that Mr. Cope was a very young man, and not likely to be so well able as herself, with all her experience, to decide what she could afford, or whether she ought to follow her feelings at the