ith
her native honest prudence, she saw so unsuited to strengthen him in
his struggles, and aid him against temptation. She almost groaned when,
pressing him as to his pecuniary means, she found his old terror of debt
seemed fading away, and the solid healthful principles he had taken from
his village were loosening fast. Under all, it is true, there was what
a wiser and older person than Helen would have hailed as the redeeming
promise. But that something was grief,--a sublime grief in his own sense
of falling, in his own impotence against the Fate he had provoked and
coveted. The Sublimity of that grief Helen could not detect; she saw
only that it was grief, and she grieved with it, letting it excuse every
fault,--making her more anxious to comfort, in order that she might
save. Even from the first, when Leonard had exclaimed, "Ah, Helen, why
did you ever leave me?" she had revolved the idea of return to him;
and when in the boy's last visit he told her that Burley, persecuted
by duns, was about to fly from his present lodgings, and take his abode
with Leonard, in the room she had left vacant, all doubt was over. She
resolved to sacrifice the safety and shelter of the home assured her.
She resolved to come back and share Leonard's penury and struggles, and
save the old room, wherein she had prayed for him, from the tempter's
dangerous presence. Should she burden him? No; she had assisted her
father by many little female arts in needle and fancy work. She had
improved herself in these during her sojourn with Miss Starke. She
could bring her share to the common stock. Possessed with this idea, she
determined to realize it before the day on which Leonard had told her
Burley was to move his quarters. Accordingly she rose very early one
morning; she wrote a pretty and grateful note to Miss Starke, who was
fast asleep, left it on the table, and before any one was astir, stole
from the house, her little bundle on her arm.

She lingered an instant at the garden-gate, with a remorseful
sentiment,--a feeling that she had ill-repaid the cold and prim
protection that Miss Starke had shown her. But sisterly love carried all
before it. She closed the gate with a sigh, and went on.

She arrived at the lodging-house before Leonard was up, took possession
of her old chamber, and presenting herself to Leonard, as he was about
to go forth, said (story-teller that she was), "I am sent away, brother,
and I have come to you to take care o