eave Harry with God and
you--and I would not be hard with Harry."

"I shall not. I love Harry."

"You cannot help loving him. He is doing wrong, but you cannot stop
loving him, and you know it was _while as yet we were sinners_, God
loved and saved us. Good-bye, sir!"

The door closed and John turned the key and sat down for a few minutes
to consider his position. This sorrow on the top of his disagreement
with Jane and his anxiety about the threatened war in America called
forth all his latent strength. He told himself that he must now put
personal feelings aside and give his attention first of all to Harry's
case, it being evidently the most urgent of the duties before him. Jane
if left for a few days would no doubt be more reasonable. Greenwood
could be safely left to look after Hatton mill and to buy for it all the
cotton he could lay his hands on. He had not the time to visit his
mother, but he wrote her a few words of explanation and as he knew
Jane's parlors were full of women, he sent her the following note:

MY DEARLY LOVED WIFE,

Instant and important business takes me at a moment's notice to
London. I have no time to come and see you, and solace my heart
with a parting glance of your beauty, to hear your whispered
good-bye, or taste the living sweetness of your kiss, but you will
be constantly present with me. Waking, I shall be loving and
thinking of you; sleeping I shall be dreaming of you. Dearest of
all sweet, fair women, do not forget me. Let me throb with your
heart and live in your constant memory. I will write you every day,
and you will make all my work easy and all my hours happy if you
send me a few kind words to the Charing Cross Hotel. I do not
think I shall be more than three or four days absent, but however
short or long the time may be, I am beyond all words,

Your devoted husband,
JOHN HATTON.

This letter written, John hurried to the railway station, but in spite
of express trains, it was dark when he reached London, and long after
seven o'clock when he reached his brother's house. He noticed at once
that the parlors were unlit and that the whole building had a dark,
unprosperous, unhappy appearance. A servant woman admitted him, and
almost simultaneously Lucy came running downstairs to meet him, for
during the years that had passed since her marriage to Harry Hatton,
Lucy had become a real sister to John and