,
and danger through which we have come! I cannot be sufficiently
thankful that we are safe from the dreadful ordeal, and with so few
marks of the fire upon us."

A silence followed this, in which two hearts, at least, were humbled,
yet thankful, in their self-communion--the hearts of Henry and Miriam.
Through what perilous ways had they come! How near had they been to
shipwreck!

"Poor Mrs. Marion!" said Edith, breaking the silence, at length. "How
often I think of her! And the thought brings a feeling of condemnation.
Was it right for us to thrust her forth as we did?"

"Can she still be in?"

"Oh no, no!" spoke up Henry, interrupting his mother. "I forgot to tell
you that I met her and her husband on the street to-day."

"Are you certain?"

"Oh yes."

"Did you speak to them?"

"No. They saw me, but instantly averted their faces. Mrs. Marion looked
very pale, as if she had been sick."

"Poor woman! She has had heart-sickness enough," said Mrs. Darlington.
"I shall never forgive myself for turning her out of the house. If I
had known where she was going!"

"But we did not know that, mother," said Edith.

"We knew that she had neither friends nor a home," replied the mother.
"Ah me! when our own troubles press heavily upon us, we lose our
sympathy for others!"

"It was not so in this case," remarked Edith. "Deeply did we sympathize
with Mrs. Marion. But we could not bear the weight without going under
ourselves."

"I don't know, I don't know," said Mrs. Darlington, half to herself.
"We might have kept up with her a little longer. But I am glad from my
heart that her husband has come back. If he will be kind to his wife, I
will forgive all his indebtedness to me."

A few weeks subsequent to this time, as Miriam sat reading the morning
paper, she came upon a brief account of the arrest, in New Orleans, of
a "noted gambler," as it said, named Burton, on the charge of bigamy.
The paper dropped to the floor, and Miriam, with clasped hands and eyes
instantly overflowing with tears, looked upward, and murmured her
thanks to Heaven.

"What an escape!" fell tremblingly from her lips, as she arose and went
to her room to hold communion with her own thoughts.

Three years have passed, and what has been the result of the widow's
new experiment? The school prospered from the beginning. The spirit
with which Edith and Miriam went to work made success certain. Parents
who sent their children were so much pleased