, and her head tipped back,
and poor old mother Tenny was holding her arms, and screamin', and
it was all I could do to get the knife away," and Fanny stripped up
her sleeves, and showed a glancing cut on her arm.

"She did that before I got it away from her," she said. "Think of
it, my own sister! My own sister, who always thought so much of me,
and would have had her own fingers cut to the bone before she would
have let any one touch me or Ellen! Oh, poor Eva, poor Eva! What is
goin' to become of her, what is goin' to become of her?"

Mrs. Zelotes went out of the house with a jerk of angry decision,
and presently returned with a bottle half full of whiskey.

"Here," said she to Ellen, "you pour out a quarter of a tumbler of
this, and fill it up with hot water. I ain't goin' to have the whole
family in an asylum because Jim Tenny has run off with another
woman, if I can help it!"

The old woman's steady force of will asserted itself over the
hysterical nature of her daughter-in-law. Fanny drank the whiskey
and water and went to bed, half stupefied, and Mrs. Zelotes went
home.

"You ring the bell in the night if she's taken worse, and I'll come
over," said she to her son.

When Ellen and her father were left alone they looked at each other,
each with pity for the other. Andrew laid a tender, trembling hand
on the girl's shoulder. "Somehow it will all come out right," he
whispered. "You go to bed and go to sleep, and if Amabel wakes up
and makes any trouble you speak to father."

"Don't worry about me, father," returned Ellen. "It's you who have
the most to worry over." Then she added--for the canker of need of
money was eating her soul, too--"Father, what is going to be done?
You can't pay all that for poor Aunt Eva. How much money have you
got in the bank?"

"Not much, not much, Ellen," replied Andrew, with a groan.

"It wouldn't last very long at eighteen dollars a week?"

"No, no."

"It doesn't seem as if you ought to mortgage the house when you and
mother are getting older. Father--"

"What, Ellen?"

"Nothing," said Ellen, after a little pause. It had been on her lips
to tell him that she must go to work, then she refrained. There was
something in her father's face which forbade her doing so.

"Go to bed, Ellen, and get rested," said Andrew. Then he rubbed his
head against hers with his curious, dog-like method of caress, and
kissed her forehead.

"You go to sleep and get rested yourself, fathe