A pause of a few moments ensued, when Mrs. Gray said,

“Suppose, then, Walter, we call over and see how they are getting on at ‘home?’ Pa and Ma are lonesome, now that I am away.”

“Just what I was thinking of, Jane.  So get on your things, and we will join them and spend a pleasant evening.”

These brief conversations will indicate to the reader how each of the young men and their wives were thus early beginning to reap the fruits of true and false principles of action.  We cannot trace each on his career, step by step, during the passage of many years, though much that would interest and instruct could be gathered from their histories.  The limits of a brief story like this will not permit us thus to linger.  On, then, to the grand result of their lives we must pass.  Let us look at the summing up of the whole matter, and see which of the young men started with the true secret of success in the world, and which of the young ladies evinced most wisdom in her choice of a husband.

CHAPTER III.

“Poor Mrs. Wilton!” remarked Mrs. Gray, now a cheerful, intelligent woman of forty, with half-a-dozen grown and half-grown up daughters, “it makes me sad whenever I see her, or think of her.”

“Her husband was not kind to her, I believe, while she lived with him,” said Mrs. Gray’s visitor, whom she had addressed.

“It is said so.  But I am sure I do not know.  I never liked him, nor thought him a man of principle.  I said as much as I thought prudent to discourage her from receiving his attentions.  But she was a gay girl herself, and was attracted by dashing pretension, rather than by unobtrusive merit.”

“It was thought at one time that Mr. Wilton would lead in the profession here.  I remember when his name used frequently to get into the newspapers, coupled with high compliments on his brilliant talents.”

“Yes.  He flashed before the eyes of the crowd for awhile, but it was soon discovered that he had more brilliancy than substance.  The loss of two or three important cases, that required solid argument and a well-digested array of facts and authorities, instead of flights of fancy and appeals to the feelings, ruined his standing at the bar.  The death of his father-in-law, with an insolvent estate, immediately after, took wonderfully from the estimation in which he was held.  Thrown, thus, suddenly back, and upon his own resources, he sunk at once from the point of observation, and lingered around the court-house, picking up petty cases, as a matter of necessity.  Long before this, I had noticed that Mrs. Wilton had greatly changed.  But now a sadder change took place—­a separation from her husband.  The cause of this separation I know not.  I never asked her, nor to me has she ever alluded to it.  But it is said that his manner towards her became insufferable, and that she sought protection and an asylum among her friends.  Be the cause what it may, it is enough to make her a poor, heart-stricken creature.”