Mrs. W. did not hesitate a moment.  In four days from the time she received the letter, she was on the way to Cincinnati.  Arrived there, she was met by her husband with some show of affection.  He was greatly changed since she had seen him, and showed many indications of irregular habits.  He appeared to have plenty of money, and took rooms for his wife in a respectable boardinghouse.  The improvement in his child pleased him much.  When he went away it was only about five months old—­now it was a bright little boy, and could run about and chatter like a bird.  After some hesitation in regard to the kind of business he should select, he at last determined to go into the river-trade.  To this Mrs. Warburton gently objected; because it would keep him away from home for months together.  But his capital was small, and he at length made his first purchase of produce, and started in a flat-boat for New Orleans.  Poor Mrs. W. felt as if deserted again when he left her.  But at the end of three months he returned, having cleared four hundred dollars by the trip.  He remained at home this time for two months, drinking and gambling; and at the expiration of that period had barely enough left to make a small purchase and start again.

Her troubles, she plainly saw, were just beginning again, and Mrs. Warburton almost wished herself back again in the city, for which, though there she had no friends, her heart yearned.

Her husband did not return, this time, from his river-voyage, for three months; nor did he send his wife during that time any money.  The amount left her was entirely exhausted before the end of the second month, and having heard nothing of him since he went away, she feared to get in debt, and, therefore, two weeks before her money was out, applied for work at a cigar-factory.  Here she was fortunate enough to obtain employment, and thus keep herself above absolute want.

Long before her husband returned, her heart had fearful forebodings of a second blighting of all its dearest hopes.  Not the less painful, were those anticipations, because she had once suffered.

One evening in June, just three months from the time her husband left, she had paused from her almost unremitted employment, during the violence of a tremendous storm, that was raging without.  The thunder rattled around in startling peals, and the lightning blazed from cloud to cloud, without a moment’s intermission.  She could not work while she felt that the bolt of death hung over her.  For half an hour had the storm raged, when in one of the pauses which indicated its passing away, she started at the sound of a voice that seemed like that of her husband.  In the next moment another voice mingled with it, and both were loud and angry.  Fearfully she flung open the door, and just on the pavement, drenched with the rain, and unregardful of the storm, for one more terrible raged within, stood two men, contending with each other in mortal strife, while horrible oaths and imprecations