h the old, inevitable tether, of "can't
afford."

"If something only would happen!" If some new circumstance would creep
into her life, and open the way for a more real living!

Do you think girls of seventeen don't have thoughts and longings like
these? I tell you they do; and it isn't that they want to have anybody
else meet with misfortune, or die, that romantic combinations may
thereby result to them; or that they are in haste to enact the everyday
romance--to secure a lover--get married--and set up a life of their own;
it is that the ordinary marked-out bound of civilized young-lady
existence is so utterly inadequate to the fresh, vigorous, expanding
nature, with its noble hopes, and its apprehension of limitless
possibilities.

Something did happen.

Winter came on again. After a twelvemonth of struggle and pain such as
none but a harassed man of business can ever know or imagine, Mr.
Gartney found himself "out of the wood."

He had survived the shock--his last mote was taken up--he had labored
through--and that was all. He was like a man from off a wreck, who has
brought away nothing but his life.

He came home one morning from New York, whither he had been to attend a
meeting of creditors of a failed firm, and went straight to his chamber
with a raging headache.

The next day, the physician's chaise was at the door, and on the
landing, where Mrs. Gartney stood, pale and anxious, gazing into his
face for a word, after the visit to the sick room was over, Dr. Gracie
drew on his gloves, and said to her, with one foot on the stair:
"Symptoms of typhoid. Keep him absolutely quiet."

CHAPTER VIII.

A NICHE IN LIFE, AND A WOMAN TO FILL IT.

"A Traveller between Life and Death."
WORDSWORTH.

Miss Sampson was at home this evening. It was not what one would have
pictured to oneself as a scene of home comfort or enjoyment; but Miss
Sampson was at home. In her little room of fourteen feet square, up a
dismal flight of stairs, sitting, in the light of a single lamp, by her
air-tight stove, whereon a cup of tea was keeping warm; that, and the
open newspaper on the little table in the corner, being the only things
in any way cheery about her.

Not even a cat or a canary bird had she for companionship. There was no
cozy arrangement for daily feminine employment; no workbasket, or litter
of spools and tapes; nothing to indicate what might be her daily way of
going on. On the