e factory that night.

"Look here, Ellen, you'd better go," said she, "just to show folks.
That Sadie Peel asked me this noon if it was true that you had
something on your mind, and was worrying about--well, you know
what--that made you look so."

Ellen flushed an angry red. "I'll stop for you and Maria to-night,"
she answered, quickly.

"All right," Abby replied, heartily; "we'll go on the eight-o'clock
car."

Ellen hurried home, and changed her dress after supper, putting on
her new green silk waist and her spring hat, which was trimmed with
roses. When she went down-stairs, and told her mother where she was
going, she started up.

"I declare, I'd go too if your father had come home," she said. "I
don't know when I've been anywhere; and Eva was in this afternoon
and said that she and Jim were going."

"I wonder where father is?" said Ellen, uneasily. "I don't know as I
ought to go till he comes home."

"Oh, stuff!" replied Fanny. "He's stopped to talk at the store. Oh,
here he is now. Andrew Brewster, where in the world have you been?"
she began as he entered; but his mother was following him, and
something in their faces stopped her. Fanny Brewster had lived for
years with this man, but never before had she seen his face with
just that expression of utter, unreserved joy; although joy was
scarcely the word for it, for it was more than that. It was the look
of a man who has advanced to his true measure of growth, and
regained self-respect which he had lost. All the abject bend of his
aging back, all the apologetic patience of his outlook, was gone.
She stared at him, hardly believing her eyes. She was as frightened
as if he had looked despairing instead of joyful. "Andrew Brewster,
what is it?" she asked. She tried to smile, to echo the foolish
width of grimace on his face, but her lips were too stiff.

Ellen looked at him, trembling, and very white under her knot of
roses. Andrew held out a paper and tried to speak, but he could not.

"For God's sake, what is it?" gasped Fanny.

Then Mrs. Zelotes spoke. "That old mining-stock has come up," said
she, in a harsh voice. "He'd never ought to have bought it. I should
have told him better if he had asked me, but it's come up, and it's
worth considerable more than he paid for it. I've just been down to
Mrs. Pointdexter's, and Lawyer Samson was in there seeing her about
a bond she's got that's run out, and he says the mine's going to pay
dividends, and for Andr