Such is the touching tale narrated by a newspaper correspondent.  It is in every respect true; I knew the parties well, and during that long bitter period of thirteen years it was commonly asked concerning the woman:  “Hasn’t that hag trapped anybody yet?  She’ll have to take back old Jabe when he gets out.”  And she did.  For nearly thirteen weary years she struggled nobly against fate:  she went after every unmarried man in her part of the country; but “No,” said they, “we cannot-indeed we cannot-marry you, after the way you went back on Jabe.  It is likely that under the same circumstances you would play us the same scurvy trick.  G’way, woman!” And so the poor old heartbroken creature had to go to the Governor and get the old man pardoned out.  Bless her for her steadfast fidelity!  Margaret the Childless.

This, therefore, is the story of her:—­Some four years ago her husband brought home a baby, which he said he found lying in the street, and which they concluded to adopt.  About a year after this he brought home another, and the good woman thought she could stand that one too.  A similar period passed away, when one evening he opened the door and fell headlong into the room, swearing with studied correctness at a dog which had tripped him up, but which upon inspection turned out to be another baby.  Margaret’s sus-picion was aroused, but to allay his she hastened to implore him to adopt that darling also, to which, after some slight hesitation, he consented.  Another twelvemonth rolled into eternity, when one evening the lady heard a noise in the back yard, and going out she saw her husband labouring at the windlass of the well with unwonted industry.  As the bucket neared the top he reached down and extracted another infant, exactly like the former ones, and holding it up, explained to the astonished matron:  “Look at this, now; did you ever see such a sweet young one go a-campaignin’ about the country without a lantern and a-tumblin’ into wells?  There, take the poor little thing in to the fire, and get off its wet clothes.”  It suddenly flashed across his mind that he had neglected an obvious precaution-the clothes were not wet-and he hastily added:  “There’s no tellin’ what would have become of it, a-climbin’ down that rope, if I hadn’t seen it afore it got down to the water.”

Silently the good wife took that infant into the house and disrobed it; sorrowfully she laid it alongside its little brothers and sister; long and bitterly she wept over the quartette; and then with one tender look at her lord and master, smoking in solemn silence by the fire, and resembling them with all his might, she gathered her shawl about her bowed shoulders and went away into the night.  The Discomfited Demon.