Two days more passed, during which time neither Brainard nor his wife said any thing to each other about money, although the thoughts of both were busy for most of the time on that interesting subject.  Silently sat Brainard at the breakfast-table on the morning of the day when his last note fell due.  How was he to meet the payment?  Two hundred dollars!  He had not so much as fifty dollars in his possession, and as to borrowing, that was a vain hope.  Must he go to the holder of the note, and ask a renewal?  He shrunk from the thought, murmuring to himself—­“Any thing but that.”

As for getting the required sum through Anna, he did not permit himself to hope very strongly.  She had looked thoughtful since their last interview on the subject, and at times, it seemed to him, troubled.  It was plain that she had been disappointed in any efforts to get money that she might have made.

“That she, too, should be subject to mortification and painful humiliation!” said he, as his mind dwelt on the subject.  “It is too bad—­too bad!—­Oh, to think that my folly should have had this reaction!”

Anna looked sober as Brainard parted with her after breakfast, and he thought he saw tears in her eyes.  As soon as he was gone she dressed herself, and taking from a handsome jewel-box the present of her husband, a gold watch and chain, a bracelet, diamond pin, and some other articles of the same kind, left the house.

Two hours afterward, as Brainard sat at his desk trying to fix his mind upon the accounts before him, a note was handed in bearing his address.  He broke the seal, and found that it enclosed one hundred and seventy dollars, with these few words from Anna: 

“This is the best I can do for you, dear husband.  Will it be enough?”

“God bless her!” came half audibly from the lips of Brainard, as he drew forth his pocket-book, in which were thirty dollars.  “Yes, it will be enough.”

“There is no comfort in owing, or in paying after this fashion,” said the young man to himself, as he walked homeward at dinner-time, with his last note in his pocket.  “There will have to be a change.”

And there was a change.  When next I visited my young friend, I found him in a smaller house, looking as comfortable and happy as I could have wished to see him.  We talked pleasantly about the errors of the past, and the trouble which had followed as a natural result.

“There is one thing,” said Brainard, during the conversation, glancing at his wife as he spoke, “that I have not been able to make out.”

“What is that?” asked Mrs. Brainard, smiling.

“Where the last one hundred and seventy dollars you gave me came from.”

“Have you missed nothing?” said she, archly.

“Nothing,” was his reply.

“Been deprived of no comfort?”

“So far from it, I have found a great many new ones.”

“And been saved the trouble of winding up and regulating that pretty eight-day clock for which you gave forty dollars.”