f women. It is
refreshing to know that he had a wife that snubbed him, and didn't
believe in him, and did not honor and obey him, and----"

She had unfolded the letter as she was speaking, and now her eyes were
so busy, that her tongue got no message to deliver, and this was what
she read:--

MY DEAR SISTER CHRISTINE,

I am still here, waiting for the information I asked you to get
me, namely the address of my dear wife. I am unhappy, I may say I
am miserable; and I can never settle anywhere, till I see her. If
she then refuses to hear and believe me, life will be over to me.
But she will believe me, for I will tell her the truth, and she
will see that though I was foolish, I was not criminal. The law
separating these two conditions is far from being clear enough. I
want to know where my wife is! She will believe me! She will trust
me! You do. Mother did. Roberta has been very near and dear to me.
She has been forced to abandon me. It is the injustice of my
treatment that is killing me. If I could only clear myself in her
sight, I could lift life again, and make the best of it. I am not
half content in this place. I cannot believe the people here are
representative Americans, and I dislike small towns. Traders and
dwellers in small towns are generally covetous--they have a
sinister arithmetic--they have no clear notions of right and
wrong, and I think they are capable of every kind of malice known
to man. I want to go to a big city, where big motives move men,
and if you do not send me Roberta's hiding place, I will put out
for California, if I foot it every step of the way. I am stunned,
but not broken.

Your loving brother,

NEIL.

When she had finished this letter, she was crying. "Give it to me!"
she sobbed, "it is all about me, Christine. Give it to me! Poor Neil!
He has been badly used! Oh Christine, what must I do?"

"You ought to go to his side, and help him to mak' a better life. What
prevents ye?"

"Oh the shame of it! The atmosphere of the prison!"

"You promised God to tak' him for better or worse, richer or poorer.
You are breaking your promise every day, and every hour, that you stay
away from him."

"You must not blame me ignorantly, Christine. My brother and I were
left alone in the world, when he was ten years old, and I was eight.
He at once assumed a tender and careful charge of my lonely life. I
cannot tell you how good and thoughtful he