the news is true?
Are you sure my John has joined?
I can't believe the happy news,
And leave my fears behind,
If John has joined and drinks no more,
The happiest wife am I
That ever swept a cabin floor,
Or sung a lullaby.

"That's just the way I feel to-night, I haven't been so happy before for
years."

"And I hope," said Mr. Clifford, "that you will have many happy days
and nights in the future."

"And I hope so too," said Joe, shaking hands with Paul and Belle as they
rose to go.

Mr. Clifford accompanied Belle to her door, and as they parted she said,
"This is a glorious work in which it is our privilege to clasp hands."

"It is and I hope," but as the words rose to his lips, he looked into
the face of Belle, and it was so radiant with intelligent tenderness and
joy, that she seemed to him almost like a glorified saint, a being too
precious high and good for common household uses, and so the remainder
of the sentence died upon his lips and he held his peace.

Chapter XV

"I have resolved to dissolve partnership with Charles," said Augustine
Romaine to his wife, the next morning after his son's return from the
Champaign supper at John Anderson's.

"Oh! no you are not in earnest, are you? You seem suddenly to have lost
all patience with Charlie."

"Yes I have, and I have made up my mind that I am not going to let him
hang like a millstone on our business. No, if he will go down, I am
determined he shall not drag me down with him. See what a hurt it would
be to us, to have it said, 'Don't trust your case with the Romaine's for
the Junior member of that firm is a confirmed drunkard.'"

"Well, Augustine you ought to know best, but it seems like casting him
off, to dissolve partnership with him."

"I can't help it, if he persists in his downward course he must take the
consequences. Charles has had every advantage; when other young lawyers
have had to battle year after year with obscurity and poverty, he
entered into a business that was already established and flourishing.
What other men were struggling for, he found ready made to his hand, and
if he chooses to throw away every advantage and make a complete wreck of
himself, I can't help it."

"Oh! it does seem so dreadful, I wonder what will become of my poor
boy?"

"Now, mother I want you to look at this thing in the light of reason and
common sense. I am not turning Charles out of the house. He is not poor,
though the way he is