OP OF SORROW IN THE CUP
THAT ALREADY BRIMMED OVER.

"Alone with my hopeless sorrow,
No other mate I know!
I strive to awake tomorrow,
But the dull words will not flow.
I pray--but my prayers are driven
Aside by the angry Heaven,
And weigh me down with woe!"

Young, beautiful, penniless, and alone in the world! Oh, what a cruel
fate!

Dainty realized it in all its bitterness when she arrived in Richmond
that dull October day, and found the first snow of the season several
inches deep on the ground, making her shiver with cold in her thin
summer gown and straw hat.

But her heart was warm with the thought of the dear mother she was going
to rejoin.

What a glad reunion it would be for both in spite of her bitter
troubles, when, clasped in that dear mother's arms, she should lay her
weary head on that dear breast, and sob out all her grief to
sympathizing ears.

She had a little money in a small purse that Franklin had forced her to
take as a loan, and she hired a cab to take her to her old home, where
she had not a doubt of still finding her mother.

Alas! what was her horror to find the small house burned to the ground!

Dismissing the cab, she started on a round of the neighborhood, seeking
news of the dear one.

But there were new neighbors in the sparsely settled place, and no one
knew anything about the little lady who had kept boarders at the house
on the corner.

Half frozen with the bitter cold, she dragged herself to the corner
grocery, thinking that Mr. Sparks could surely give her some
information.

His stolid, well-fed face was the first familiar one she had met, and
she wondered why he wore that broad band of crape about his coat-sleeve.

"Is it really you, Miss Chase? Well, well! you're quite a stranger! Been
ill? You don't look as blooming as when you went away in the summer.
Well, it was hard on you losing your little mother in that cruel
fashion! But death is no respecter of persons. He robbed me of my ailing
wife about the same time your mother was called. What! you don't
understand? Bless me! the girl's dropped like I'd shot her! Ailsa!
Ailsa!" he called in alarm, as he picked up the unconscious girl, and
hurried with her to the back of the store, which was also his dwelling.

Then a pretty, brown-eyed girl, sitting with several noisy children,
sprang up, and cried in wonder:

"What is the matter?"

"Here's your old neighbor and school-mate,