The boy was correct in his conclusions.  The man Foster, of whom he spoke, did feel troubled.  He had children and a wife, and he was absent from them, and had been absent for many months.  On New Year’s day he was to go home; but many painful feelings mingled with the thought of seeing his long-neglected and much-abused family.  Since he had been away, he had expended more than half his earnings upon himself, and yet his appearance was worse than when he went from home, for, in exchange for his money, he had received only poison.

It was evening.  Without, the air was cold.  The sky was clear, and the moon and stars shone brightly.  Foster walked a short distance from the house, trying to drive from his mind the images that had been conjured up by the words of the children and their mother; but he could not.  His own abused wife and neglected little ones were before him, in their comfortless home, poorly clad, and pale and thin from want of healthy and sufficient food.  Did they think of him, and talk with so much delight of his return?  Alas! no.  He brought no sunshine to their cheerless abode.

“Wretch! wretch!” he said to himself, striking his hand hard against his bosom.  “A curse to them!—­a curse to myself!”

For an hour the unhappy man stayed out in the chilly air; but he did not feel the cold.  Then he re-entered the house, but did not go into the room where the happy mother sat with her children, but to the lonely attic where he slept.

Twenty miles away lived the wife and three children of Foster.  The oldest boy was eleven years of age, and the youngest child, a little girl, just five.  Three small mounds, in a burying-ground near by where the humble dwelling stood, marked the place where as many more slept—­more blessed than the living.  The mother of these children was a pale-faced woman, with a bent forth and an aspect of suffering.  She had been long acquainted with sorrow and trouble.  Like hundreds and thousands of others in our land, she had left, years before, the pleasant home of her girlhood, to be the loving companion of one on whose solemnly pledged faith she relied with the most unwavering confidence.  And, for a time, the trust was not in vain.  The first golden period of her married life was a happy time indeed!  None could have been more thoughtful of her comfort, nor more tender of her feelings, than was her husband.  But, alas! it was with him as with hundreds and thousands of others.  Not once did it cross his mind that there was danger to him in the pleasant glass that was daily taken.  The bare suggestion he would have repelled as an insult.  On the day of his marriage, Henry Foster received from the father of his wife the title-deeds of a snug little place containing thirty acres, which was well stocked for a small farmer.  He had, himself, laid by a few hundred dollars.  Thus he had a fair start in the world, and a most comfortable assurance of happiness and prosperity.  For several