At last, the sun was just sinking behind a distant hill.  It was the hour to expect him.  The children were gathered around her in the door, and her eyes were afar off, eagerly watching to descry his well-known form in the distance.  As minute after minute passed away, and the sun at length went down below the horizon, her heart began to tremble.  Still, though she strained her eyes, she could see nothing of him,—­and now the twilight began to fall, dimly around, throwing upon her oppressed heart a deeper shadow than that which mantled, like a thin veil, the distant hills and valleys.  With a heavy sigh, she was about returning into the house, when a slight noise within caused her to turn quickly, and with a start.

“Back again, safe and sound, old girl!” greeted her glad ear, as the form of her husband caught her eye, coming in at the back door.

“O, Jim!” she exclaimed, her heart bounding with a wild, happy pulsation.  “How glad I am to see you!”

And she flung herself into his arms, giving way, as she did so, to a gush of joyful tears.

“And I’m glad enough to see you, too, Sally!  I’ve thought about you and the children all day, and of how much I have wronged you.  But it’s all over now.  That pledge has done it!” pointing up as he spoke to his pledge nailed over the mantelpiece.  “Since I signed that, I’ve not had the first wish to touch the accursed thing that has ruined me.  I’m free, now, Sally!  Free to do as I please.  And that’s what I havn’t been for a long time.  As I told Mr. Jones, I don’t care now for all the grog-shops, whiskey-bottles, and Harry Arnolds, from here to sun-down.”

“I told you it was all nonsense, Jim, about signing away your liberty!” Sally said, smiling through her tears of joy.

“Of course it was.  I never was free before.  But now I feel as free as air.  I can go in and come out and care no more for the sight of a grog-shop, than for a hay-stack.  I can take care of my wife and children, and be just as kind to them as I please.  And that’s what I couldn’t do before.  Huzza for the pledge, say I!

“Blister my feathers if ever I drink another drop of Alcohol, or anything that will make drunk come, sick or well, dead or alive!”

That evening Jim Braddock sat down to a good supper with a smiling wife, and three children, all cleanly dressed, and looking as happy as they could be.  The husband and father had not felt so light a heart bounding in his bosom for years.  He was free,—­and felt that he was free to act as reason dictated,—­to work for and care for his household treasures.

Nearly a year has passed, and Mr. James Braddock has built himself a neat little frame house, which is comfortably furnished, and has attached to it a well-cultivated garden.  In his parlour, there hangs, over the mantelpiece, his original pledge, handsomely framed.  Recently in writing to a friend, he says—­