the scars left on their backs by the thongs of
cat-o'-nine-tails when he punished them for some slight misdemeanor.
They were all terrified at him, all obeyed him like soldiers, but
none escaped his severity. The two elder ones, a boy and a girl,
had married before they left England. The next girl married in
Ohio, and the boys drifted away, glad to escape from a parental
tyranny that made home anything but a desirable abiding-place.
Finally but two remained of the first family--Lydia and her sister
Elizabeth, a most lovable girl of seventeen, whose beauty of
character and self-sacrificing heart made the one bright memory
that remained with these scattered fledglings throughout their
entire lives.

The lady who occupied the undesirable position of stepmother to
these unfortunate children was of the very cold and chilling type
of Englishwoman, more frequently met with two generations ago than
in this age. She simply let her husband's first family alone. She
took no interest in them, neglected them absolutely, but in her
neglect was far kinder and more humane than their own father. Yet
she saw that all the money, all the pretty clothes, all the
dainties, went to her own children.

Perhaps the reader will think these unpleasant characteristics of a
harsh father and a self-centred stepmother might better be omitted
from this narrative, particularly as death claimed these two many
years ago; but in the light of after events, it is necessary to
reveal what the home environment of these children had been, how
little of companionship or kindness or spoken love had entered
their baby lives. The absence of mother kisses, of father
comradeship, of endeavor to understand them individually, to probe
their separate and various dispositions--things so essential to
the development of all that is best in a child--went far towards
governing their later actions in life. It drove the unselfish,
sweet-hearted Elizabeth to a loveless marriage; it flung poor,
little love-hungry Lydia into alien but, fortunately, loyal and
noble arms. Outsiders said, "What strange marriages!" But Lydia, at
least, married where the first real kindness she had ever known
called to her, and not one day of regret for that marriage ever
entered into her life.

It came about so strangely, so inevitably, from such a tiny
source, that it is almost incredible.

One day the stepmother, contrary to her usual custom, went into the
kitchen and baked a number of litt