One more bitter dreg yet remained for his cup.  Not a week had gone by ere the father of his dead wife spoke to him these cutting words:—­

“You were nothing to me while my daughter lived—­you are less than nothing to me now.  It was my wealth, not my child you loved.  She has passed away.  What affection would have given to her, dislike will never bestow on you.  Henceforth we are strangers.”

When the next sun went down on that stately mansion, which the wealth-seeker had coveted, he was a wanderer again—­poor, humiliated, broken in spirit.

How bitter had been the mockery of all his early hopes!  How terrible the punishment he had suffered!

One more eager, almost fierce struggle with alluring fortune, with which the worldling came near steeping his soul in crime, and then fruitless ambition died in his bosom.

“My brother said well,” he murmured, as a ray of light fell suddenly on the darkness of his spirit; “‘contentment is better than wealth.’  Dear brother!  Dear old home!  Sweet Ellen!  Ah, why did I leave you?  Too late! too late!  A cup, full of the wine of life, was at my lips; but, I turned my head away, asking for a more fiery and exciting draught.  How vividly comes before me now that parting scene!  I am looking into my brother’s face.  I feel the tight grasp of his hand.  His voice is in my ears.  Dear brother!  And his parting words, I hear them now, even more earnestly than when they were first spoken.  ’Should fortune cheat you with the apples of Sodom, return to your home again.  Its doors will ever be open, and its hearth-fires bright for you as of old.’  Ah, do the fires still burn?  How many years have passed since I went forth!  And Ellen?  Even if she be living and unchanged in her affections, I can never lay this false heart at her feet.  Her look of love would smite me as with a whip of scorpions.”

The step of time has fallen so lightly on the flowery path of those to whom contentment was a higher boon than wealth, but few footmarks were visible.  Yet there had been changes in the old homestead.  As the smiling years went by, each, as it looked in at the cottage window, saw the home circle widening, or new beauty crowning the angel brows of happy children.  No thorn to his side had Robert’s gentle wife proved.  As time passed on, closer and closer was she drawn to his bosom; yet never a point had pierced him.  Their home was a type of Paradise.

It is near the close of a summer day.  The evening meal is spread, and they are about gathering round the table, when a stranger enters.  His words are vague and brief, his manner singular, his air slightly mysterious.  Furtive, yet eager glances go from face to face.

“Are these all your children?” he asks, surprise and admiration mingling in his tones.

“All ours, and, thank God, the little flock is yet unbroken.”

The stranger averts his face.  He is disturbed by emotions that it is impossible to conceal.