The father went back to his supper, but his appetite was gone.  There was that in the act of his child, simple as it was, that moved his feelings, in spite of himself.  All at once he thought of the orange she had asked for her mother; and he felt a conviction that it was to buy an orange that Jane was now going to sell the iron she had evidently been collecting since dinner-time.

“How selfish and wicked I am!” he said to himself, almost involuntarily.

In a few minutes Jane returned, and with her hand under her apron, passed through the room where he sat into her mother’s chamber.  An impulse, almost irresistible, caused him to follow her in a few moments after.

“It is so grateful!” he heard his wife say, as he opened the door.

On entering her chamber, he found her sitting up in bed eating the orange, while little Jane stood by her looking into her face with an air of subdued, yet heartfelt gratification.  All this he saw at a glance, yet did not seem to see, for he pretended to be searching for something, which, apparently obtained, he left the room and the house, with feelings of acute pain and self-upbraidings.

“Come, let us go and see these cold-water men,” said a companion, whom he met a few steps from his own door.  “They are carrying all the world before them.”

“Very well, come along.”

And the two men bent their steps towards Temperance Hall.

When little Jane’s father turned from the door of that place, his name was signed to the pledge, and his heart fixed to abide by it.  On his way home, he saw some grapes in a window,—­he bought some of them, and a couple of oranges and lemons.  When he came home, he—­went into his wife’s chamber, and opening the paper that contained the first fruits of his sincere repentance, laid them before her, and said, with tenderness, while the moisture dimmed his eyes—­

“I thought these would taste good to you, Mary, and so I bought them.”

“O, William!” and the poor wife started, and looked up into her husband’s face with an expression of surprise and trembling hope.

“Mary,”—­and he took her hand, tenderly—­“I have signed the pledge to-night, and I will keep it, by the help of Heaven!”

The sick wife raised herself up quickly, and bent over towards her husband, eagerly extending her hands.  Then, as he drew his arm around her, she let her head fall upon his bosom, with an emotion of delight, such as had not moved over the surface of her stricken heart for years.

The pledge taken was the total-abstinence pledge, and it has never been violated by him, and what is better, we are confident never will.  How much of human hope and happiness is involved in that simple pledge!

THE TEMPERANCE SONG.

“DEAR father,” said Mary Edwards, “don’t go out this evening!” and the young girl, who had scarcely numbered fourteen years, laid her hand upon the arm of her parent.