to tears.

"Why, Lenora, what is the matter?" asked Margaret.

As soon as Lenora became calm, she answered, "_That name_, Maggie. You
have given my name to Walter Hamilton's child, and if you had hated me
you would never have done it."

"Hated you!" repeated Margaret; "we do not hate you; now that we
understand you, we like you very much, and one of Kate's last
injunctions to Walter was that he should again offer you a home with
him."

Once more Lenora was weeping. She had not shed a tear when they
carried from sight her mother, but words of kindness touched her
heart, and the fountain was opened. At last, drying her eyes, she
said, "I prefer to go with father. Walter will, of course, come back
to the homestead, while father and I shall return to our old home in
Connecticut, where, by being kind to him, I hope to atone, in a
measure, for my great unkindness to mother."

CHAPTER XIV.

FINALE.

Through the open casement of a small, white cottage in the village of
P----, the rays of the September moon are stealing, disclosing to view
a gray-haired man, whose placid face still shows marks of long years
of dissipation. Affectionately he caresses the black, curly head which
is resting on his knee, and softly he says, "Lenora, my daughter,
there are, I trust, years of happiness in store for us both."

"I hope it may be so," was the answer, "but there is no promise of
many days to any save those who honor their father and mother. This
last I have never done, though many, many times have I repented of it,
and I begin to be assured that we may be happy yet."

* * * * *

Away to the westward, over many miles of woodland, valley, and hill,
the same September moon shines upon the white walls of the
"homestead," where sits the owner, Walter Hamilton, gazing first upon
his wife and then upon the tiny treasure which lies sleeping upon her
lap.

"We are very happy, Katy darling," he says, and the affection which
looks from her large blue eyes as she lifts them to his face is a
sufficient answer. Margaret, too, is there, and though but an hour
ago her tears were falling upon the grass-grown graves where slept her
father and mother, the gentle Carrie, and golden-haired Willie, they
are all gone now, and she responds to her brother's words, "Yes,
Walter, we are very happy."

* * * * *

In the basement below the candle is burned to its socket, and as the