The thoughtful walked amid all these lively scenes, and wondered if the gay plumage covered only happy breasts.

The gay passed on, and thought only of joy and their own pleasures, dreaming not that saddened lives had an existence near at hand.

Afar from all this life and gaiety, stood a low, brown cottage in a barren spot, upon the brow of a hill.  No trees sheltered it, giving that air of protection which ever sends delight to the beholder.  No indication of taste or culture met the sight; naught but a bare existence, and every-day toil to sustain it, impressed the passer-by.

One day when the wind blew loud and bleak, and the snow fell fast, a young girl looked from that cottage window, upon the scene before her, with that abstraction which one feels when all hope has withered, and every fresh impulse of a young heart has been chilled.

She scarcely realized that the afternoon was fast wearing away, until the entrance of one, who, in a sharp, shrill voice, thus addressed her:  “Well, Margaret Thorne, I hope you have looked out of that ere winder long ’nough for one day.  I’ve been inter this room fifty times at least, and you hav n’t stirred an inch.  Now go and get supper, milk the cows, and feed the pigs; and mind, don’t forget to fodder that young heifer in the new stall-and look here, you lazy thing, this stocking won’t grow any unless it’s in your hands, so when supper’s over, mind you go to work on ’t.”

Margaret went quickly to her duties, glad to escape from the sound of that voice, and be alone with her own thoughts.

This was but a portion of her daily life of drudgery.  The old house was no home to her, now that her dear mother was laid in the little church-yard.  She could just remember her.  It was years before, when, a little child, she used to hear a sweet voice singing her to sleep every night.  The remembrance of that, and of the bright smile which greeted her each morning, was all that made her life endurable.  She had no present-no future.  It was this bright recollection on which she was pensively meditating that stormy afternoon.

Margaret’s mother, Mary Lee, had married when very young, a man greatly her inferior.  She was one of those gentle, timid beings, who can not endure, and brave their way through a cold world, much less a daily contact with a nature so crude and repulsive as that of her husband’s.  She longed to live for her child’s sake, but the rough waves of life beat rudely against her bark-it parted its hold, the cold sea swept over it, and earth, so far as human sight went, knew her no more.

One balmy spring day, when the blue skies seemed wedded to the emerald hills, they laid her form away, and little Margaret had lost a mother’s earthly protection.

In less than a year after that sweet face went out of the home, another came to take her place; a woman in form and feature, but in nature a tyrant, harsh and cruel.