The face of his wife had never looked so pale, her cheeks so thin, nor her eyes so sunken, to the minister, as when he came home from this mortifying and disheartening meeting of the vestry.  One of those present was the very person he had gone a mile to visit on the night of the snow-storm; and he had more to say that hurt him than any of the rest.

“Edith,” said Mr. Carroll, taking the thin hand of his wife, as he sat down by her and looked sadly into her face, “we must leave here.”

“Must we?  Why?” she asked, without evincing very marked surprise.

“We cannot live on three hundred a year.”

“Where will we go?”

“Heaven only knows!  But we cannot remain here!”

And as the minister said this, he bowed his head until his face rested upon the arm of his wife.  He tried to hide his emotion, but Edith knew that tears were upon the cheeks of her husband.

THE SEQUEL.

JUST one year has elapsed, since Mr. Carroll accepted the call from Y—.  It has been a year of trouble, ending in deep affliction.  When the health of Mrs. Carroll yielded under her too heavy burdens, it did not come back again.  Steadily she continued to sink, after the first brief rallying of her system, until it became hopelessly apparent that the time of her departure was near at hand.  She was too fragile a creature to be thrown into the position she occupied.  Inheriting a delicate constitution, and raised with even an unwise tenderness, she was no more fitted to be a pastor’s wife, with only three hundred a year to live upon, than a summer flower is to take the place of a hardy autumn plant.  This her husband should have known and taken into the account, before he decided to accept the call from Y—.

When it was found that Mrs. Carroll, after partially recovering from her first severe attack, began, gradually to sink; a strong interest in her favor was awakened among the ladies of the congregation, and they showed her many kind attentions.  But all these attentions, and all this kindness, did not touch the radical disability under which she was suffering.  They did not remove her too heavy weight of care and labor.  All the help in her family that she felt justified in employing, was a girl between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and this left so much for her to do in the care of her children, and in necessary household duties that she suffered all the time from extreme physical exhaustion.

In the just conviction of the error he had committed, and while he felt the hopelessness of his condition, Mr. Carroll, as has been seen, resolved to leave Y—­immediately.  This design he hinted to one of the members of his church.

“You engaged with us for a year, did you not?” enquired the member.